The Necessity of Arms
by Bimadabomi
Summary: Post Partings. Now that they've hit rock bottom, the only place to go is up. [LukeLorelai]
1. Three Strikes

_I know there are a thousand and one post finale stories already, but I really just needed the outlet. I've come to the conclusion that I'm in for the long haul with this show, so here is my bit of optimism. I struggled with this story (and actually, thinking of a title drove me crazy, so it may change) because some parts felt like they've already been done so many times already or didn't flow. And right now it seems similar to so many other stories, but this becomes more its own eventually. So I hope you enjoy! Hang in there JJ's, we'll make it to the bitter end somehow. Rating for later chapters._

For months, she had been numb. She had been numb to how Luke was treating her and she had been numb to how she was in return treating Luke. She'd gotten so used to being hurt and rejected that she had finally just shut herself off in order to avoid feeling anymore pain.

That morning, it ended. Something snapped and she was Lorelai once again. She was Lorelai with feelings and emotions again.

As she lay in bed with Christopher's arm draped around her, she suddenly realized what she had done. She suddenly realized what she had lost, how she'd been hurt, how she had acted and how unfair she herself had been.

The night before when she walked away from Luke, a part of her waiting for him to follow her, she'd felt numb. She hadn't felt the pain of losing Luke. When she went to Christopher and allowed herself to fall into bed with him, she felt numb. She hadn't felt the pain of betraying Luke. She hadn't felt the pain of betraying herself.

Then that morning suddenly she felt it all.

Christopher's arm around her triggered her wake up call. It wasn't right, it shouldn't be his arm around her. She shouldn't be in bed with him.

She realized how ridiculous the idea of Lorelai-and-Christopher really was. How it may sound like an ideal pairing, how on paper their story may seem like the story of two people who should be together, but when she was lying in bed with him, she realized how ridiculous it all was and how it didn't feel right at all.

Last night, she'd had sex with Christopher. And for the first time in her life she realized and had experienced the difference between having sex with someone and making love to someone. They weren't two words to describe the same action; they were actually two different actions that appeared somewhat the same. After sex with Christopher she was left feeling alone, except for the arm that crept over her side that morning. There was no smiling and laughing and teasing and cuddling. There were no lingering kisses, no soft kisses applied all over her face. There was no huskily whispered 'I love you' into her ear.

Because all of that was Luke. The man that loved her more than anything in the world did all of that. And that was her breaking point, when she realized what she'd given up, what she'd betrayed, what she knew she had now really assured that she would lose.

All the emotions she'd been fighting for months and then some, had suddenly caught up with her and before she knew what was happening, she was crying. Softly at first, hoping that Christopher wouldn't notice, but before she had a chance to process the change in the speed of her tears, she was sobbing, long, hard, and loud.

"Lorelai?" Christopher asked, sitting up, concerned.

"Sorry," she choked out through her sobs, embarrassed at her display, embarrassed for being in this situation at all. She quickly sat up as well, careful to keep the sheet tightly clutched around her body.

"What's the matter?" he asked quickly. "Are you okay?"

"Am I okay?" she half-shouted, half wailed. "No, I'm not okay! I'm not hysterically sobbing because I'm okay!"

"Shh, Lor, calm down, okay?" Christopher tried to sooth her. He went to lay a hand on her shoulder but she quickly shrugged away from it, not wanting him to touch her at all anymore.

"I can't calm down!" she wailed though her tears. "Everything… just, everything. And what the hell did I do last night? How could you have let me do this?"

"Whoa, wait," Christopher said, suddenly getting defensive. "Last night you wanted this to happen."

"Last night I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown!" she reminded him. "I was already halfway to hysterical when I came here. I'm not surprised I did what I did last night, but I am surprised you didn't try to stop me from doing it."

"You were upset," Christopher agreed, "that's partially why I let it happen. You begged me to make you feel better."

"Oh God," she sniffled, her sobs quieting as she and rolled her eyes.

"And besides that, I didn't think you would take me rejecting you all that well in the state you were in."

"I may not have! I may have screamed at you and been hurt and gotten mad and been irritated at the moment, but this morning I would have thanked you. I would've thanked you for being a friend and not letting me do something stupid. Instead it's the other way around. I was appreciative last night and this morning I'm upset."

"Lorelai, come on, you said you wanted it to happen. I took that to mean you wanted it to happen. You could have changed your mind and stopped it at any time. All I have to go on is what you tell me, I can't read your mind."

"God, Christopher, just… I'm not asking you to read my mind; I'm asking you to have some common sense! To think twice about sleeping with a friend who's come to you on the verge of a nervous breakdown. To think twice about sleeping with someone who's just broken up with her fiancé of a year, who she's been with for two years, and been friends with for a decade. How could you possibly think sleeping with me was the right thing to do last night?"

"You wanted me to take your mind off of Luke!" Christopher suddenly exploded. "How should I know that you'd regret it in the morning? It's you and me, Lorelai, this is what we do. How was I supposed to know this time you didn't really want to do it? It's not like you cheated on Luke or anything, you broke up. If you had been with Luke I would have stopped you right away. But you weren't."

"Emotionally I was!" Lorelai exclaimed as she got up with the sheet securely wrapped around her. "And I still am, emotionally. But you're right. It's not all your fault." She grabbed her dress from the floor and headed towards the bathroom. "And I'm not just saying that. You really are right. I'm the one who did this. It just would have been nice if you hadn't helped."

The bathroom door slammed as she left Christopher in confusion.

There were a lot of things Lorelai hadn't really looked forward to in her life. Telling her parents she was pregnant with Rory. Giving birth. Going back to school to earn her business degree. Asking her parents for money for Chilton and Yale. Friday night dinners.

But on the drive back to Stars Hollow, she had never looked forward to anything less than the moment she was going to have to face Luke.

The drive seemed to last forever. She drove back in silence, afraid to put the radio on, afraid she'd suddenly be able to identify to songs about lost love and painful breakups and afraid that she wouldn't be able to identify with songs about happy endings and true love.

She'd forced herself to stop crying after one last round of tears in the Jeep after leaving Christopher's that morning. But to compensate for the outlet of crying, her stomach tied itself in knots and she felt sick. She kept thinking about what she had done; how she had walked away from Luke last night and proceeded to walk right to Christopher. How she had thought of going to Christopher and had indeed decided on the choice because she thought of how mad Luke would be, knowing she went to Christopher for comfort. How that would hurt him, just like he'd hurt her for all those months.

The problem was, she hadn't intended to hurt him this much. She'd lost control as soon as she walked through Christopher's door.

She pulled into her driveway and was barely out of the Jeep when Luke's voice cut in to her thoughts.

"Where have you been?" his voice was laced with concern. He stood on her stairs, peering at her in concern and confusion.

"Luke," she said softly.

"Lorelai, where were you last night?" he asked, noticing her dress was the same one she had been wearing the night before, the dress that was burned into his mind because he'd replayed the scene where she walked away from him over and over in his head all night. "I've been calling your cell phone over and over, and I came here looking for you last night, and this morning, and I checked the inn, and Rory didn't know…"

"Oh Luke," she said. "You don't want to know."

"You're okay, though, right?" he asked, concern written all over his face. "I was so afraid something had happened to you, especially after you walked off like you did last night, I was afraid maybe you'd been too upset to drive or something and I just… God, I was worried."

"Can you please just bottle that feeling? Remember it."

"What?" he frowned. "Bottle what feeling?"

"Right now, I want you to think about how it feels to care about me and be worried about where I am and what's happened to me. I want you to really relish it."

"What are you talking about?"

"In about five minutes, maybe less, you're not going to care anything about me and I just really want you to remember that there was a time when you did care. I'm just giving you a warning so you can really relish this last moment of loving me."

"Lorelai," he said firmly. "I have no idea what you're talking about, but if this is about last night, then… I want to work that out."

"Last night?" she asked, suddenly wondering if he already knew about Christopher. Then realization dawned on her. "When I wanted you to elope."

"It's just that I was so caught off guard and I wasn't expecting that from you at that moment. I hadn't even seen you in days! You were pulling away from me for some reason and I was more expecting you to come and break up with me before I was expecting you to come to me wanting to elope. You just disappeared and I was missing you and confused and then you showed up with that ultimatum and I was completely taken by surprise."

"That was wrong, I know," she admitted. " It wasn't fair to do that to you. But God, if you'd only known the night I had you would've understood where it came from, believe me."

"And everything you said, Lorelai, if I had known… I had no idea you were hurting so much, that I'd caused you to become so unsure of yourself and of us, and I know now and I want to fix it. I know I can't undo everything I've done but we can fix it from here on out. Everything you put out there last night, I heard you and I've been thinking about it, and I want to fix it."

Lorelai shook her head sadly. "No."

"No?"

"You're off the hook, Luke. I messed up last night. I messed up so badly that you're not going to have to fix anything because you're not going to want to have anything to do with me and I don't blame you."

"Why, what happened last night?" he asked, suddenly remembering his earlier question. "Where were you?"

"I was… Boston," she said softly.

"Boston," she heard him repeat, his voice tight and his posture suddenly stiff. "Christopher."

Lorelai nodded, ashamed, and it broke her heart that he immediately knew what was in Boston. Looking down at her feet, she confirmed his worst fear. "Yes. Christopher."

"You went to see Christopher last night?"

She nodded. "Yes, but Luke…I'm so sorry, Luke."

"Well?" Luke persisted, his voice raising slightly. "What happened with Christopher? You wouldn't be this apologetic for just going to see Christopher because you were upset, am I right?"

There was a long pause. "You're right," she finally admitted.

"Lorelai, can we stop beating around the goddamn bush? If you're telling me anything like what I think you're going tell me, then you're going to have to say it. If you're trying to tell me what I think you're trying to tell me you've done then you're not going to get away without looking me in the eye and telling me."

"I'm so sorry," she said again, as she finally looked up at Luke with tears in her eyes. "So, so sorry, you have no idea." Luke sighed and crossed his arms impatiently. "I slept with Christopher," she admitted in a meek voice.

There was a long moment of silence. "I can't believe you," Luke said, his voice eerily steady and calm. "I can't believe you would do this. You're serious, you're really telling me this happened last night? After everything between you and me and Christopher, you would do this? You know how I feel about him, Lorelai. You know! For you to do this to me… did I really hurt you that badly? Do you really hate me that much?"

"I didn't mean for it to happen, Luke, you have to know that. I didn't go there wanting it to happen. I was really upset last night and I just went to him looking for a friend, and things got out of control…"

"I should have known," Luke finally raised his voice. "I really should have known. All those times I felt threatened by him. All those times I didn't like him being around. All those times I felt like a jerk for not wanting him around you, for worrying that you'd go back to him, for feeling like a jerk because it seemed like I didn't trust you when I did… I was right after all."

"No, it's not like that," Lorelai pleaded as the tears finally escaped and rolled down her cheeks. "You weren't right! It wasn't like that at all–"

"Yes. It is. It's simple, Lorelai. There's you and there's me and there's Christopher and only one of us can get you and apparently it's Christopher. I was walking around like an idiot thinking that somehow I could stop the magnetic force that always causes you two to come back to each other. That's the pattern. You always gravitate right back to him. For some reason I thought that I was special or something and that you would break that pattern with Christopher because you were with me. What on Earth possessed me to think that I was so special that I could cause you to stop going back to him, I don't know."

"God, Luke, this is all one big mistake!" she wailed, and reached up to wipe at the tears on her cheek. "This isn't part of my go back to Christopher pattern, I broke that years ago. I don't want to be with him! I broke that stupid cycle."

"No, you didn't. Otherwise last night wouldn't have happened."

"Last night was different, it wasn't a part of that pattern!" she insisted.

"I really thought I had you," he said softly. "I thought that somehow, I was the lucky one. Out of all those guys out there, all the ones who wanted to be with you, all the ones who had been with you and failed… that I was the one lucky enough to actually get to be with you, for good. But it's not me. They all probably thought the same thing when they were with you. I'm just another one of the idiots that's had his heart stomped on by Lorelai Gilmore. And I guess unless you're Christopher, you don't get to be the lucky one."

"He's not the lucky one!" Lorelai insisted desperately. "You are, Luke. You're the one I want to be with. I'd choose you over anyone or anything."

"Right," he replied bitterly. "Showed that to me loud and clear by sleeping with Christopher last night."

"I'm sorry I did that. You have no idea how sorry. But Luke, I swear, it was mistake! You have to understand that I was a mess. I wasn't thinking straight, and you and I had just broken up–"

"Really, we had?" he interjected bitterly. "You walked away with the ring on."

Lorelai looked down at the ground, ashamed. "I know."

"So you walk away with your engagement ring on and somehow I'm supposed to understand that you were serious about me never marrying you if I didn't do it right then? I thought it was a stupid fight. I didn't think you meant never when you said now or never. You kept the goddamn ring!"

"Well you didn't come after me!" she shouted. "I was waiting for you to come after me and I just kept walking and you never came. When did you stop coming after me?"

"I was working!"

"I was dying inside! I was dying, and the fact that you were working was more important?"

"I was mad!" he added. "I was mad at you for hiding from me for days for whatever reason, and don't try and tell me you weren't, then showing up out of the blue demanding me to marry you right then."

"I'm sorry," she said again. "I am so, so, sorry. I'd take it all back in an instant if I could."

"Well unfortunately you can't."

"You just have to know how sorry I am," Lorelai pleaded. "You have every right to hate me, but when you walk away from me today, you have to know that I'm sorry and that I do love you and that I've never loved anyone but you. You have to know that, Luke, please."

"I have to go," he said, looking down at his feet to avoid Lorelai's gaze. "I'm sorry for how I treated you the past few months. I really am. I stayed up all night last night thinking about it, playing it all over in my head, noticing where I went wrong and feeling like crap because I'd hurt you so much and didn't even realize it, because I'd caused you to become the person you were last night… so sad and upset."

"Luke…"

"And the worst part? The worst part is that while I was lying there beating myself up, you were with him. I just can't believe it. You're not the person I thought you were if you could do this. I never would have thought you'd do something like this to me, or to anyone for that matter. Did you have the ring on?"

"What?"

"When you slept with him," Luke said. "Did you have the ring on?" he paused. "You know what, I don't want to know. I have to go."

"Luke, please," Lorelai said, and paused before continuing. "Is there any way we could ever…"

"I don't know," he cut her off, knowing what she was going to ask. "I don't think so. Not now. Not after the one thing that…" he trailed off. "I really have to go."

She nodded sadly and watched his form hurry off away from her house, what had almost been their house, staring after him long after he had disappeared from sight.

She couldn't even feel bad about what had happened, about the things he had said to her, because she knew he was right, and she knew that this was what she deserved after last night. And she couldn't help but think, over and over… strike three.

First there was Rory and Jess's accident and the resulting fight. It had been a sort of break up, even though they weren't together at the time. Then there was their break up last year.

And now, strike three.

If Luke didn't hate her and wasn't now removed from her life, he'd probably be proud of the baseball metaphor.

But Luke did hate her and he was removed from her life.

Three strikes and you're out.

tbc...


	2. Three Weeks

_This update was pretty fast, as the next few chapters might be because I wrote a lot of them before I posted chapter one (at least parts of them), some of them even before the finale aired. After chapter 4 or so, they may slow down. Be waned. ;) Thanks so much for all the reviews on part one! And since someone asked, I should add that the rating is for later chapters._

"Mom!" Rory's voice began on the answering machine. "Mom, I've been calling you. I've left you like twenty voicemails. Okay, three. But still, that's unusual for you to miss that many of my calls and ignore that many of my messages. And then today I called Luke's, looking for you, and I'm not sure I really felt good about the vague, distant answers he gave me about where you might be. Call me, okay?"

"Lorelai, it's Sookie. I know you said you wouldn't be in for a few days, but I was just wondering how many days a 'few' is? Because I'd kind of like to know when you're coming back. Any kind of timeframe would help. I hope everything's okay, Hon. Hope you're feeling better, is it the flu? Because that's been going around lately. Okay, feel better!"

"Mom, it's me again. Look, I just called Dad, and when I said I hadn't heard from you in a few days he got weird, too. Not as weird as Luke, but still. What happened? Something happened, didn't it? If Luke's being weird and Dad's being weird, and you're being weird… that's not a good combination, given the relationship between Dad and Luke. I'm going to come home today if I don't hear from you."

"Lor, it's me. Look, I know things ended badly last week, but I thought we could talk. I just talked to Rory today and she's worried about you, and I'm worried about you if she has reason to be worried about you, and I don't want to have this lingering between us forever. Please just call me and let's try and clear the air? I hope you're okay. Talk to you later."

"Hello, this message is for Lorelai Gilmore. Lorelai, this is Lisa at Marie's Bakery in New Haven. We had an order for a wedding cake placed a few months ago, for a wedding on June 3. I haven't heard anything from you about the status of your order, and whether or not you're still interested in having this cake for your wedding on June 3. If you are, we need to confirm with you and get a down payment. Thanks."

Lorelai deleted each of the messages from the machine and headed back to the couch without the phone, having no intention to return any of the calls.

She'd been sleeping on the couch for three days now.

She couldn't sleep in her bed… in their bed.

For all her life that she'd lived in this house she had never let any man, with the exception of Max for that one night, sleep in her bed. She'd let Luke sleep in the bed many, many nights. She'd let Luke do much more than simply sleep in that bed, many, many times. And then she'd gone so far as to get a new bed, and remodel the bedroom, with Luke, to make it theirs…

And then this happened.

Now, she couldn't face the bedroom or the bed. And she couldn't help but think that this was exactly why she never allowed men to sleep in her bed.

She knew Rory would be there soon. She could tell that she was sufficiently freaking Rory out by not calling her back, but she just couldn't do it. She couldn't tell Rory what she'd done. She couldn't tell Rory that she'd ruined everything with Luke, again, and that she'd done it by sleeping with Christopher, which would prove Rory's theory from nearly two years ago right: that she always messed things up by going back to Christopher.

Why did she do that, anyway? What was it about Christopher that kept her going back? She honestly had no idea. She'd always thought that Rory's accusation that she let things get messed up when Christopher around was crazy, especially after she was with Luke. But it was true. She let things get messed up because of Christopher, and she didn't understand why. She loved Luke, more than she could put into words. She loved Luke just as much as she loved Rory, which was an incredible feat, for him to be that important to her.

So why did she always mess things up by going to Christopher?

She couldn't even understand why she did it. Because she'd wanted to hurt Luke? Because she knew she could sleep with Christopher and then easily disconnect herself from him again, no strings attached? Because he just happened to be the one she went to at a time when she wasn't thinking straight? But why had she gone to him?

Because Rory was busy with Logan, and she had already worn out her welcome at Sookie's place? Because her parents were her parents, and the one she'd always go to before Christopher had let her walk away from him without so much as calling after her?

It must have been a combination of all of those things. But now she couldn't remember why she had even thought going to Christopher that night was a good idea in the first place.

She'd always wanted so badly to keep Christopher as a part of her life, as a friend. She'd tried so hard to make Luke understand that Christopher would always be a part of her life because of Rory. And she knew that he could understand that now, now that he had April and Anna. Christopher, for many years, had been her only bright spot at fancy Christmas parties and big, formal dinners. He'd been the only one who had allowed her to be her for so many years. She found it hard to cut that guy out of her life. But she didn't want to be with him. When he'd interfered during the vow renewal, she'd had no problem cutting him out of her life for that year, until his phone call, because he'd hurt her, and Luke, too much. And Luke came before Christopher, always.

She'd told Luke she could cut him out, if that's what it would take to make their relationship work. And then she'd done this. How could she have stood there, telling Luke she'd cut Christopher out of her life for him one year and then the next year, sleep with him the same night she broke up with Luke?

She didn't even understand herself.

She heard the door open, and realized Rory was home. "Mom?"

"On the couch," Lorelai replied. Rory came into the living room and stopped in her tracks as she noticed the mess of take out containers and junk food spewed all around.

"Uh oh," Rory said, worried. "I knew something bad had happened. What happened?"

"Long story short, I'm a bitch, Luke hates me, I hate myself."

"Okay. Short story long?"

"Luke and I broke up. Again. Is that getting old to you? Because it is for me."

"You and Luke broke up? Why? How?"

"I went psycho crazy, Rory. I really and truly went crazy."

"When?"

"Wow: what, why, how and when all in the space of thirty seconds. You really are becoming a journalist."

"When did this happen, Mom?" Rory asked again, ignoring Lorelai's comment and attempt at acting fine and moving aside an empty Chinese take-out container so she could sit down on the table in front of her mother.

"Friday, after dinner."

"After I left?" Lorelai nodded. "Okay, I'm following so far. Keep talking."

"Mom invited this psychiatrist to dinner, trying to set her up with your dad. Well after dinner she was blocking my car in, so I started talking to her, and suddenly I was spilling everything about Luke and me. She kind of freaked me out, telling me I didn't really have Luke and that only I had the power to make things happen. So I went to Luke and instead of just talking to him like I think she probably meant, I told him I wanted to elope. And not only elope, but I told him I wasn't going to wait anymore and that we had to elope right then or never. Guess what he chose?"

"Never?" Rory guessed.

"Yes. Well, actually, he didn't exactly say never, but he also wasn't about to elope right then with a version of his fiancée that seemed to have escaped from a mental institution. I got mad, I walked off, and he didn't come after me."

"Oh, Mom, you two can totally fix this, he didn't really mean never, you know that, and--"

"No, no. Not over yet."

"Oh."

"So I was really, really upset, and I needed to go somewhere and talk to someone. You were with Logan, and I'd already worn out my welcome at Sookie's, and I was really putting her and Jackson out by being there that one night anyway. My parents are, well, they're Emily and Richard. So I found myself going to Boston."

"Oh no," Rory realized. "Mom…"

"Oh yes, that's right, the wonderful person that I am, I went right to Christopher. He'd just been at dinner so I guess I had him in my head."

"I'm sure Luke didn't like that."

"No. And you know what else Luke didn't like? Me having sex with Christopher."

Rory's jaw dropped. "Mom!" she exclaimed in shock, and Lorelai wasn't sure if it was from the bluntness of her statement or the shock of what she had done. "Are you serious? You and Dad…"

Lorelai nodded. "Oh yes. I'm serious, unfortunately. So there you have it. Short story long."

Rory sat there, stunned into silence for a long moment. "I can't believe it."

"I can't either. I'm such a hypocrite. When I came down so hard on you after the whole Dean fiasco, when I judged Logan for what he did to you? I'm no better."

"What does this..." Rory paused, unsure of how to continue. "What does theis mean? You and Dad?"

"Oh, God, Rory, it meant nothing," Lorelai quickly told her. "I'm sorry if you still have some dream about me and your dad being together, but it was a mistake, it was me not thinking straight, it meant nothing. I love Luke, this was all just me being... well, me."

Rory nodded. "I thought so. That it was a mistake."

"You have to believe me when I say that I love Luke and this meant nothing," Lorelai pleaded.

"I do," Rory assured her quickly. "Of course I do. I know how much Luke means to you."

Lorelai nodded. "Okay. At least someone does."

"So I take it Luke knows about you and Dad?"

"I told him," Lorelai admitted. "The next morning he was here waiting for me, worried about where I'd been, apologetic and wanting to fix things. So I had to tell him."

"Oh man," Rory said. "He must have been crushed, I mean…" she trailed off, realizing what she was saying. "Sorry."

"No, that's okay. You're right. He was crushed. I've never seen the man look so hurt in his life, and it was because of me, Rory. Me."

"You didn't mean to hurt him," Rory understood. "I know that."

"But it doesn't change the fact that I did. He's my best friend. And do you know that he's actually called me his best friend before? Seriously referred to me as his best friend, and not just in that 'She's my best friend because I'm dating her and sleeping with her' kind of way. This isn't what you do to your best friend and someone who thinks of you as his best friend. God, I just feel so horrible and guilty and… dirty."

"I don't know what to do for you," Rory admitted, gently moving over to the couch to stroke Lorelai's hair. "I know you're feeling awful, but I don't know what to say to make it better."

"You can't make it better," Lorelai told her. "It's just going to suck for a long time."

"It'll get better."

"All he did was love me. He was so hurt because of me, and why? Because he loved me. He loved me and it got him hurt. How is that fair?"

"It's not," Rory admitted. "I know how he's feeling right now, because of everything with Logan…" she trailed off, and Lorelai grimaced knowing her daughter had recently been hurt by someone doing the same thing she'd just done. "But I also know how sorry Logan was for what he did, so I know how you're feeling too."

"I officially give up," Lorelai said. "With relationships. If I failed with Luke, it's just not in the cards for me."

"Don't say that. That's a sad thought."

"Well, I don't want anyone else but Luke. I'm thirty-eight years old, Rory, and I'm still in love with Luke, and I always will be. Even if somehow I managed to move on, by then I'll probably be in the middle of a mid-life crisis and the chance for more kids and a family will be long gone. So I'm just giving up now, sparing myself the pain of getting my hopes up for all of that again. And besides, I really don't think that there'd ever be anyone who I could see myself with after Luke."

"Maybe there's still a chance for Luke," Rory said with a shrug.

"No way. Did you not hear what I did? Do you not know who Luke and Christopher are and how they feel about each other?"

"Oh Mom," Rory said sadly, giving Lorelai a hug. "Life just sucks sometimes."

"You said it, Kid."

After a few days had passed, Lorelai managed to move back upstairs to the bedroom, reminding herself that Luke hadn't slept in that bed with her for a long time, even before the engagement had broken. That this was the same house that she'd lived in since Rory was eleven, and she wasn't going to be scared out of a bedroom because of Luke.

That still didn't stop her from crying herself to sleep the first two nights she slept in the bed.

She couldn't help but look around the room and think that the fact that Luke hadn't been sharing her bed for a long time didn't comfort her, in fact, that was the problem. During the remodel they had spent so many nights together, and they decorated the bedroom together, for them. And now it was just her in a room that should be filled with Luke's things and Luke's presence, in a bed that was always intended to be half Luke's, from the moment they bought it.

And the fact that Luke wasn't here, that this wasn't their bedroom, was all her fault, she noted.

After the first two nights of crying herself to sleep, she turned to a routine of being unable to fall asleep, which lasted about four days, and after that phase she turned to a routine of tossing and turning all night long once she did fall asleep, which was scheduled to last indefinitely.

She couldn't remember the last time she actually slept, she couldn't remember a time when she didn't dread going to bed. She used to look forward to sleeping.

After her visit with Rory, she had summoned up the courage to call Sookie and tell her what had happened, and Sookie had quickly told her to take as much time off as she needed. Then she managed to call Marie's Bakery, and when Lisa answered the phone, instead of just telling her she didn't need the cake for June 3rd, she felt the need to tell her there was no wedding on June 3rd, at all, anymore, which made Lorelai start crying and Lisa awkwardly told this stranger she had never met that everything would be okay.

But everything wouldn't be okay. Lorelai know that.

At first she had looked so forward to June 3rd, when she thought it was the day that she was going to marry Luke. Then when the wedding was postponed, she dreaded the day. Now she kicked herself for being so whiny about a stupid postponed wedding, because at least there still was a wedding. Now she had nothing.

There was one call she hadn't returned from the endless messages she had acquired while she was in depression, and she wasn't sure if she could bring herself to return it. What would she say to Christopher? Could she really bring herself to talk about that night, that night again? With him? And besides that, she didn't know what she was going to say about it, or how she would get through the conversation without breaking down. For god's sake, she broke down talking to Lisa at Marie's Bakery.

And a part of her knew she wasn't returning that call because she felt like that would be betraying Luke. Ironic, really, for her to feel that way about calling Christopher back after she'd already slept with him, which was a little worse. But she couldn't do it, she just couldn't pick up the phone.

So she shouldn't have been surprised when Christopher showed up at the inn the Thursday before Memorial Day.

"Lorelai, someone is here to see you," Michel informed Lorelai, poking his head into her office.

"Really? Who?" she asked with a frown. She didn't have many people coming to see her lately, unless it was Rory, and Rory was currently in the middle of a summer school class.

"Do you really expect me to remember all the men who come in and out of your life?" Michel asked. "However, I can confirm this one has been here before."

Lorelai sighed and got up, deciding to stop playing games with Michel. She stepped out into the lobby and stopped in her tracks when she saw Christopher standing there.

"Chris? What–"

"You haven't returned my calls," he explained quickly. "Rory said you were okay, but I was worried about you, especially after…" he trailed off. "And I was worried about us, I don't want you to never talk to me again because of that night."

"I'm sorry I didn't call you back," Lorelai admitted. "But I just couldn't. It was too hard. It's too hard for me to think about what I did, let alone talk about it. With you."

He nodded. "We don't have to talk about that night, I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"You want to come into my office?" Lorelai asked knowing Sookie and Michel were probably lurking near by. "We can talk."

Chris nodded and followed her into her office, where she closed the door securely behind them. He stood awkwardly, and she stood with her arms crossed, nervously waiting for him to say something.

"You were right about that night," he said, apparently forgetting his promise that they didn't have to talk about that night. "I shouldn't have let it happen."

"No. It wasn't fair of me to blame it on you," she commented. "It was my choice. It was my choice, and you went along with it, and that's not your fault. I was just so upset, so angry with myself for that night I was desperate to blame anyone but myself."

"If I had known you'd regret it so much, I definitely wouldn't have let it happen," he added.

"How could you have thought I wouldn't regret it?" she countered. "I had just broken up with my fiancé of a year. The guy I'd been with for two years. When am I ever with anyone that long? We were never even together that long. You know that's huge for me. I'd just broken up with this guy, with Luke. Luke is in his own special category in my head. Of course I was going to regret that night."

"I don't know," he shrugged. "I guess it was because you had just broken up with Luke. I thought that maybe… I don't know, that maybe the reason you decided to come to me of all people right after you broke up with Luke was because you really wanted to be with me and Luke didn't really matter, that you were ready to move on right away because you really wanted me or something stupid like that."

"Oh God," Lorelai said, feeling the familiar tears in her eyes again. "I'm sure that's what he thinks, too," she realized. "But Chris, that's not true. Luke does matter. He matters a lot."

"Yeah, I'm getting that," Chris tried to crack a joke. "Loud and clear."

"Do you still…" she began awkwardly. "Do you still want to be with me?" she questioned.

Christopher looked down at his feet and sighed. "Lorelai, who wouldn't?"

"We're not on the same page anymore, then," she realized. "That's our problem."

"You don't… with me?"

"I'm in love with Luke."

"But you and Luke broke up," Christopher reminded her gently. "I know it still hurts now, but what about one day, when all this pain has gone away? Wouldn't you consider being with me then? Giving us another try?"

"No," she said simply. "Because I know it wouldn't be what I'm looking for. Luke was it and I know that. Even if it's over already, even if I've lost him for good, that was the one I was supposed to be with. There's no point in trying again and considering other people, you or anyone else, when I'm always going to love him the most. I would never be able to think of another relationship as the relationship, you know?"

Christopher shrugged. "Not really."

"If you and I were meant to be, it would have happened a long time ago."

"Things got in the way," he protested. "We never had a chance to try."

"We did," she said. "We had a million and one chances to try. But we blew them off, or we decided not to, and that tells me all I need to know."

"So you'd really never consider us again?"

"The last time I considered being with you was… Sherry."

"Right."

"Ever since then I haven't considered it. I just moved on from that like I've moved on from every other relationship I've had that's failed. The loss of our relationship didn't hurt me any more than any of the other relationships I'd lost."

"Except for Luke," Chris noted knowingly.

She nodded sadly. "Except for Luke." She paused. "I know you don't get it. I know you think we belong together. But Luke is my best friend in the entire world and I would do anything to fix things with him, even if it's just so we're friends again. I will always love him, Chris. I know that. It's a feeling I've never had with anyone before, and that's why I know it's true. I will love him until the day I die, even if I never talk to him again in my life."

"Lorelai--"

"And I know that you're probably going to say the same thing about me. And I'm sorry if that's true, if you feel that way about me and I can't give that back to you. But I can't."

"I understand."

"You do?"

He shrugged. "I don't like it, but I do."

"I need our cycle to stop," she said seriously. "I don't want to cut you out of my life, I want us to be friends. But we have to just be friends. Friends with nothing hidden behind it. You can't be the friend that's waiting for something to happen so that you can make a move. We have to just be friends and that's it, friends for now and friends in the future, no chance for anything else. Even if Luke's out of the picture forever, which is most likely the case, you have to understand that we're done. We can't keep doing this. Things like the vow renewal," she saw Christopher flinch at the mention of this, "and like that night wouldn't happen if we just left our boundaries as friends and nothing more. And that is what I want to be. Friends and nothing more."

Christopher sighed. "Okay. If that's what you want, then okay."

"Really? Just like that, okay?"

"I wish the response was different, but I don't want to screw up our friendship. I don't want you to be out of my life forever. You're my oldest friend, I don't want to lose that friend."

Lorelai nodded. "Okay. Good. So we're good."

"Yeah, we're good," Christopher nodded. "I am sorry about that night–you were right, I should have been a better friend, I shouldn't have just jumped at the chance to be with you."

Lorelai sighed. "Let's just… can we just forget that night happened? I messed up that night, you messed up, let's just drop it. The damage is done for me, I don't want to dwell on it forever."

"Fair enough," Christopher nodded. "Okay, I should go. Thanks for talking to me."

Lorelai nodded. "Bye Chris," she said as he stepped out of her office, and she immediately felt like a weight had been lifted off her chest.

She'd finally managed to pull that door shut all the way, and it only felt good.

Unfortunately, the realization that she needed to close that door once and for all came at the price of closing the door that Luke was behind, too.

"Aww, there's the birthday girl!" Lorelai cooed when Sookie opened the door with Martha on her hip.

"Hi!" Martha squealed, giggling in delight.

"Hey there, Munchkin," Lorelai laughed. She turned to Sookie. "Where did the year go, huh?"

"Tell me about it!" Sookie said with a sad sigh. "I can't believe she's already one."

"Me either. Seems like yesterday that she was born."

"I'm glad you came," Sookie said seriously, closing the door behind Lorelai as she stepped inside.

"Why wouldn't I come?" she asked, and leaned down to Martha once again, playfully pinching her cheek. "What kind of godmother would I be if I missed my goddaughter's first birthday?" Martha giggled again at Lorelai's playfulness.

"I know, I just, you know… Luke and all. Have you even seen him since…?"

Lorelai sighed. "No. And Sookie, Luke and I… that was almost three weeks ago." As if three weeks was really any amount of time, she thought. But she was determined to get people to stop looking at her in that way… that cross between finding her pathetic and being sympathetic. She was determined to get people to stop walking on eggshells around her, even though that's exactly what they should be doing because she was dying inside and the littlest things could set her off, as Lisa at Marie's Bakery had already learned.

"I know, and for one of those weeks you were confined to your couch. Is it crazy to think that you might not be up for a one year-old's birthday party after only three?" Sookie frowned.

"It's not just any one year-old's party," Lorelai said, keeping up her cheery tone and keeping her attention focused on Martha to avoid having to look at Sookie for fear Sookie would see right through her front. "And I don't want to talk about Luke, okay? Please?"

"Sure thing." Sookie handed Martha off to Jackson, who was passing by. He picked her up and tossed her in the air, causing Sookie to wince. "Be careful, Hon. Not as high as last time, remember what happened last time?"

"What happened last time?" Lorelai asked, hoping that her curiosity would change the subject to the antics of Jackson and the Bellville kids.

"Oh, God," Sookie said, recalling it. "He hit her head on the ceiling lamp in our dining room. She wailed for like an hour. It was horrifying."

"Aww, poor kid."

"I've gotta go check on the cake," Sookie realized, looking at the oven timer.

"Ooh, cake. I'll help," Lorelai volunteered, following Sookie into the kitchen.

"I'm trying a new recipe," Sookie explained. "I really wanted to make this new strawberry-peach cake I got a recipe for, but Jackson said no. Something about kids not liking cakes with fruit."

Lorelai laughed. "Well this looks good."

"Triple chocolate."

"Now that, kids will like."

"That's the hope," Sookie said. "God, I still can't believe she's one! Where did the year go? It flew by."

"This year sure was something," Lorelai said, and Sookie glanced at her sympathetically when she caught her tone.

"Some years are always crappier than others," Sookie reminded Lorelai gently.

"I remember the day Martha was born," Lorelai recalled. "I thought I was pregnant."

Sookie dropped the butter knife she had been holding. "You thought you were what?"

"I thought I was pregnant," Lorelai said, laughing a bit at Sookie's shock. "Why is that so crazy?"

"You never said anything to me!"

"You were in labor, you were kinda busy."

"Wow. I do remember you acting a little strange, asking me questions about conceiving and stuff, but I thought that was something I made up in the drug induced haze."

Lorelai smirked. "No, that was real. It was all a part of my freak out. Do you realize if I had been, I would have a…" she sighed. "I would have a baby right now."

"Well, it's best you weren't, then," Sookie pointed out. "The last thing you needed during this past year was the stress of being pregnant and having a newborn on top of everything else."

"Yeah, I guess that's true. I doubt that me being pregnant would have somehow caused April not to show up, and wow, that sounded bad." Lorelai realized quickly. "I didn't mean it like that. I'm glad she showed up, Luke adores her and he deserves to know about her, I just meant… that was where all the problems came from, and they still would have happened because April still would have come into Luke's life, even if I had been pregnant."

"Don't you resent her, just a little bit?" Sookie asked curiously. "And it's me, so be honest."

"No," Lorelai said. "I don't. She's Luke's daughter, I would never resent his kid."

"But she was the cause of all the problems between you and Luke."

"No she wasn't. We were."

"But it was her appearance that--"

"If it hadn't been her showing up, it would have been something else that made it all come crashing down," Lorelai said, and while the things she was saying were true and she had known all along, it was the first time she had really spoken the thoughts and come to terms with them. "We should have been able to handle it. He shouldn't have had the urge to lie to me about her, I should have had the urge to speak up about being left out of everything. It might be easy to just blame it on April, but it's not her fault. It's ours."

"I guess that makes sense." Sookie looked at Lorelai with a raise of her eyebrows. "I'm impressed. If it was me I'd blame it all on the kid."

"She's an awesome kid, Sookie," Lorelai added. "And Luke just lights up when he talks about her and when he's around her. He loves being a father. April coming into our lives… his life… it was good. The way we handled it was bad."

Sookie sighed. "I never would have thought Luke would be a father without you."

Lorelai looked down at the ground. "Okay, I'm ready to drop this topic now."

"Sorry," Sookie said quickly. "So, this is the current topic of debate between me and Jackson: triple chocolate cake, too much chocolate or just enough?"

Lorelai gave a small smile. "Not enough, if you ask me," she teased.

Through the rest of the party, Lorelai smiled and laughed in all the right places, and actually thoroughly found herself amused when Martha plastered cake all over her face. But her thoughts were now focused on one thing she'd never really thought about before: the three month-old she could have had at this moment and how much she really wanted that baby.

Sookie was right. April still would have come into their lives, and she and Luke still would have had problems in how they dealt with the situation, even if she had been pregnant. But things would have been different. Christopher never would have happened. And maybe they would have been married already. Because unlike with Christopher, she knew she would have married Luke after finding out she was pregnant. Because she would have known that they would have gotten married one day, anyway, pregnant or not. Or so she thought back then. Now she knew better.

And even if they hadn't been married, and even if everything had fallen apart like it had now, she would have had her baby, at least. Rory was off living her own life most of the time, especially now that she had her own place during the summer, too, and was engrossed in summer school. And without Luke around, Lorelai felt alone more often than not. At least she would have had the baby to keep her company. And at least she would have had a part of Luke around her all the time. And Luke would have never disappeared from her life completely if they had shared a child.

But most of all, it would've been a kid with Luke. At least she would have gotten the chance to have that, since she sure wasn't going to have that chance now.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that she had Christopher connected to her forever because of Rory, and Luke had Anna connected to him forever because of April, but there was nothing to keep the two of them connected forever.

That, she supposed, was what they were supposed to do themselves, without anything forcing them together. Stay connected forever.

But they hadn't been able to manage.

tbc...


	3. One Man

She hadn't seen Luke since the morning after. The morning after Christopher, the morning after her mistake, the morning after he refused to elope, the morning after everything had gone wrong.

May was quickly about to turn into June, and she hadn't even seen him. Of course, she was careful to avoid the parts of town where the diner was in view as much as possible, and when she was near the diner, she got out of the area, or walked past the diner, as quickly as possible, so it wasn't any small wonder she hadn't seen him.

But now he had something she needed–besides her heart, she thought sarcastically. She'd put this off as long as she could, but she had to do it eventually, and now was as good a time as any. He'd had weeks to cool off. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

She arrived at the diner just after ten, knowing it would be closed and Luke would be cleaning up. She didn't need an audience for this, her first meeting with Luke in weeks, something she knew most of Stars Hollow would love to be privy to. She tapped on the door lightly, so lightly that he didn't hear her at first. She finally summoned up the courage to knock, and his head jerked up. She couldn't see any emotion on his face as he walked over to the door to let her in.

"Lorelai," he said, his voice void of any emotion.

"Luke, hi," she said awkwardly.

"We're closed," he said gruffly.

"No, I know… I mean, I'm not here for coffee or dinner or whatever. It's just… you have my glasses."

He looked confused. "I do?"

She nodded. "You do. I'm just here to pick them up and then I'll be gone in a flash. We can pretend this never happened."

"I don't remember having your glasses," he stated.

"Well you do," she snapped.

"After all this time, you come here for them now?"

"I've been using my contacts, and I have an older pair of glasses I can use if I really need my glasses, but the prescription's not strong enough and they give me a headache."

"Oh."

"So, please," she said with a sigh. "If you could just look for them upstairs?"

"Fine," he said, heading towards the stairs and gesturing for her to follow. "Let's go."

She nodded, a little surprised that he was asking her to come upstairs with him to look, but it kind of made sense being that he apparently had no idea he had her glasses, and probably had no idea where to look.

His apartment looked the same, she thought with a sigh. It looked the same as it did all those nights she spent there, the same as it did all those years they had been friends. She sighed, thinking about how for a while she had practically had him moved out of this tiny place, in with her, and now he was back here completely.

"Any idea where they'd be?" Luke asked, breaking her from her thoughts.

"Oh. I'm not sure. I just know that they're here somewhere," she stated. "Maybe in the bedroom."

He nodded, and she took that as confirmation that she should look herself. When did things get so awkward around Luke? Who was she kidding, she knew when. But she didn't like it. She couldn't remember ever feeling awkward around Luke, ever, except for maybe once or twice not long after they first met.

"Darn," she said, shutting the drawer of the nightstand on what used to be her side of the bed. "I really need them."

"Yeah, well," Luke scoffed. "We all need a lot of things. Like fiancée's that don't cheat on us."

And there it was, the red checkered flag.

"I didn't cheat on you," she shot back quickly, straightening up from where she'd been hunched over the drawer of the nightstand. "We broke up."

"According to you," he said with a shrug. "I, however, had no idea that was the case."

"Wow, we're really turning into Ross and Rachel here, aren't we?" Lorelai said with a roll of her eyes.

"No. No, we're not turning into Ross and Rachel, because Ross and Rachel were friends after all that crap. Ross and Rachel ended up getting together in the end. We are not Ross and Rachel."

She was wide eyed at his rant, partially for all his knowledge of Ross and Rachel-- he really had been paying attention to the reruns she made him watch-- and partially for his insistence that she would never be a part of his life again.

"Okay, fine, we're not Ross and Rachel," she grumbled, suddenly angry. "And you know what I needed?" she asked. "I needed a fiancé that trusted me, didn't lie to me, and included me in his life!"

Luke suddenly stiffened."Oh, do not try and put all of this on me," Luke retorted. "I may have screwed up, yes, but you never said anything to me for months. You acted like everything was fine. You never acted like you were holding it against me that I kept April from you for two months. You acted like you forgave me for that."

"I did!" she exclaimed. "I did forgive you for that, I understood that, I got over it. But you remember what I said? At the winter carnival? I said that we would make it work. And by that I didn't mean you, in your own little world where you lived without me, but I meant us. You completely shut me out of the biggest part of your life for the past four months."

"You never said anything!" he shot back, gesturing wildly. "All you had to do was call me on my crap. You always call me on my crap, Lorelai. You wouldn't even let me get away with claiming to live with Nicole when I wasn't, really. So why in the hell would you let me get away with hurting you like this? Do you think I wanted to hurt you like that? Is that what you think?"

"No, of course not!"

"Well you know what? I can't say the same thing about you."

"What?"

"You and Christopher that night."

"I didn't do that to hurt you!" she exclaimed. "I didn't, Luke. I'd never do something like that to you--"

"And yet, hey, look at that, you did."

"I never would have done it if we were together. And I didn't do it on purpose," she said softly. "I went there, I wasn't thinking, I thought I'd lost you anyway. You didn't want to marry me, what the hell would you care who I slept with?"

"I did want to marry you. I wanted to marry you so much, Lorelai. But not that night. Not without Rory. Not when you were so upset. Not without working through all the problems you'd presented that I hadn't even known about."

"Well you still let me walk away!" she said, tears springing to her eyes. "All you had to say was something, anything, and I would've come right back and realized how crazy I was acting. All you had to do was say something to stop me from thinking you were willing to let me go!"

"So it's all my fault? I sent you right to him that night, is that it?" Luke asked, raising his eyebrows.

"No, I'm not saying that…" she trailed off softly, unsure of what, exactly, she was saying.

"I had no idea you were so hurt. You said something about the wedding, one time, when we were in Martha's Vineyard, and that was it. Nothing about anything else. You just let this go on and on without talking to me even once. You think I shut you out of my life? Well, fine, maybe you're right, maybe I did without meaning to. But you shut me out of yours, too, by not telling me how you felt."

"Oh, please," she scoffed. "That's hardly the same thing."

"It is the same thing, Lorelai. I had no idea that you were so goddamn hurt, and then you come to the diner begging me to elope, dropping all this crap on me about how miserable you've been and how apparently it's my fault, stuff I had no idea about… and you expected me to just jump in the car and head off to Maryland and get married? Like that? Was that really how you wanted us to get married?"

"It's not even about that anymore, Luke! Where was that that night, huh? Why didn't you stop me from walking away and ask me that then?"

"I don't know. Because I didn't think that your next stop would be Christopher's bed, maybe."

"God," she said, exasperated. "I give up. I don't know why I'm fighting with you about this, what does it matter? You said it yourself, we're not Ross and Rachel, we're not going to be friends, we're not going to end up together. And this is just going to keep going the same way, with you throwing that back in my face."

He laughed bitterly. "You say that as if it's something I should easily forgive you for. I trusted you. It was Christopher, Lorelai."

"I know!" she said, clearly angry at herself.

"Christopher. The one that you told me would always be in your life just because of Rory. The one you said you'd cut out of your life for me. The one that you assured me meant nothing to you, over and over and over, because you loved me."

"I know!"

"Then I screw up, I become a jerk for a few months and suddenly he's prince charming and our roles have reversed. Twenty-two plus years, he's been a jerk to you. Ten years I've done anything for you. And then we switch places for a few months and suddenly you're switching relationships, to stick with the good one at the moment. And hey, maybe it's great he's the good one now, so you can finally have your chance with him."

"It's not like that, Luke. You don't understand. No one understands!" she finally burst, choking back a sob. "No one understands that I've never loved anyone but you. Oh, that Lorelai, she had a kid at sixteen, she's thirty-eight years old, so she must have loved before. Besides, she didn't even look at Luke for all those years. If she really loved him, especially only him, she would've noticed it sooner, right?"

"Lorelai," Luke said forcefully.

"Well maybe they don't know everything about me! Maybe it just so happens that I managed to go thirty-six years before falling in love. Maybe I do love you more than any man in the entire world, despite the fact that I danced around you for eight years. Maybe I really do!"

"Lorelai!" he tried to get a word in.

"And if you can't understand that, either," she sighed. "If you can't understand that I love you more than anyone I've ever been with, then maybe it's good we're over." There was a long silence, and Lorelai wiped at her tears and glanced around the apartment. "Forget about the glasses, I'll just order new ones."

He nodded dumbly and let her walk away again, out of the apartment as she let the door swing open with a bang. He heard the door to the diner open and shut, and he sighed.

She was gone again.

xxxxx

"So you went to get your glasses, and you fought with Luke?" Rory's voice asked over the phone as Lorelai lay in bed later that night.

"Yes. I finally summoned up some courage to go get those stupid glasses, which I've put off doing since the break up, and then we got into a screaming match."

"What about?"

"What not about?" Lorelai asked. "Him shutting me out of his relationship with April, him lying to me about April, me and Christopher, me not speaking up about how I felt--"

"I still don't understand that one myself," Rory interjected. "That's not you, to let someone else control things when it's hurting you so much."

"I didn't want to push him," she admitted. "I knew if I pushed him, I'd lose him, just like last time we broke up."

"And yet…" Rory let the silence speak for itself. "Mom, you need to find some kind of medium. Not pushing him like last time, but not going mute, either."

"Well, doesn't matter much now, anyway. We're done."

"Oh, Mom…"

"And don't try and tell me there's still a chance. There's not. We're over. He'll never get past the Christopher thing, I made sure to put the final nail in the Luke-and-Lorelai relationship with that choice."

"I got past it with Logan," she pointed out. "When he was with those other girls."

"Other meaningless girls that you haven't felt threatened by for the entire run of your relationship," Lorelai pointed out.

"Well, true."

"He's so right, you know? This is the one thing I could have done to completely betray him. After all those times I assured him Christopher was nothing, that he was just the past…"

"It was a mistake. You didn't mean for it to happen, you didn't want to hurt Luke like that, I know that. But it's harder for Luke to see that, especially when he probably thinks Dad is your first true love that you're never going to get over. Something weird happens to you when you get around Dad. You kind of give off that impression."

"But he's not. I've only ever loved one man, and it's Luke."

"I know."

"Even though I went to Chris that night, it's not because I love him. It's because I know that he always wants me. And I was so sure that Luke didn't want me anymore. I just needed someone to want me."

"I really think Luke could understand that, if you give it time."

Lorelai sighed. "No, he won't. After today I realize that my pleas with Luke to see that it was a mistake are meaningless to him. Before I felt like it was just... I don't know. I realized today it was more than just sleeping with someone, with Chris. It was about me shattering every bit of trust he had in me by doing the one thing he always feared but trusted me not to do. Like you said, he thinks somewhere deep down I'm in love with Chris still, and now it's like this proved it or something. You know, he saw. He saw all those times I tried things with Chris, he saw me at my worst because of Chris, he probably always thought... God, I see this in a whole new way now." She sighed. "I really see how it looked to him all of a sudden. And you know what the worst part of it all today was?"

"Of your fight with Luke?"

"Yes. The worst part was that," Lorelai picked at a thread on the bedspread, " while I was standing there, screaming at him, having him say all this hurtful stuff to me, I just kept thinking that I miss him."

"Well of course you do," Rory said softly. "He's… he's Luke."

"I miss seeing him, I miss the way he used to light up when I'd walk into the diner. I miss having him next to me when I wake up in the morning." Lorelai paused. "Do you know his arm always ended up across me, or around me, somehow, almost every night? I miss that. I miss him complaining about what I eat and what I watch, and I miss him making me watch some baseball game when there's a Lifetime movie on starring some popular actress as a teenager. I just miss him."

"I know you do," Rory assured her.

"And my life will never be the same. I can't even go into the diner as a regular customer. We'd probably get into a fight over something stupid, like the salt shakers." She paused. "Yep, we could. See, April was filling salt shakers when I found out about her. Even discussing salt shakers could bring on the next world war. And I don't have him around anymore, even as a friend. I hate that I lost that, too. But mostly I hate that I lost him, as the guy I was going to be with for the rest of my life, and I miss him."

"You loved him," Rory said knowingly, offering an explanation for why she missed him so much.

"Yes," Lorelai said, thankful someone seemed to understand. "I did–I do. So much. And that's why I miss him in this way that I've never missed any of the others."

The conversation turned to silence, so Rory changed the topic. "Mom, you do know what's coming up…"

"I don't want to talk about it." Lorelai immediately knew she was talking about what would have been her wedding day.

"I know, but it is coming up, and you're going to have to live it."

"I don't want to talk about it, Rory," she said. "If I don't talk about it and I don't worry about it and I just live it like any other day, it will come and go, no big deal."

"That's not going to work, Missy, and you know it," Rory insisted. "Let's just think of something to do on that day, something that'll keep your mind off it."

"My mind isn't going to be off of it, now or ever. So let's just drop it, this is not what I need today."

"Fine," Rory said with a sigh, knowing her mother was only going to cause herself more pain."

"So have you talked to Logan lately?" Lorelai asked, stealthily moving the conversation onto Rory's relationship and guiltily, she thought, onto Rory's pain.

Maybe that would keep her from focusing on hers.

tbc...


	4. One Night

A/N: I've been bad at posting these chapters here. They're all at BWR already. I'm just catching up with posting here. ;)

Lorelai woke up, and before she was even able to open her eyes, she knew what day it was.

June 3rd.

She knew what the day was, and she didn't want to face it.

She finally forced herself to open her eyes and found herself staring at her digital clock. If everything had gone right, what would she have been doing right now, she wondered? Getting ready for her wedding? How different would the day have been, had everything not gone so wrong?

This was exactly the kind of thing she didn't want to do all day on this day, she realized. So she blocked the date out of her head and forced herself out of bed.

As soon as her feet hit the floor the phone rang, as if whoever was calling knew she had just joined the living. Groaning, she reached out for it and found it despite the lack of contacts, and managed to pick it up before the machine got to it.

"Hello?"

"I was sure you wouldn't be coming in today," Sookie's voice rang out, "but I just thought I'd call and see how things are going."

"Things are going fine, Sookie," Lorelai assured her. "I just woke up. I'm about to get in the shower. Very exciting stuff, I know."

"So you're not coming in today, right?"

"I don't think so, no," Lorelai agreed. "Not today," she added softly.

"You're not going to be too hard on yourself today, are you? You're not going to sit and wallow, right?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do today," Lorelai admitted. "Besides not working. But don't worry about me, I'll be fine. After everything that's happened these past few months, I think that getting through a day that's hard just because of the date is the least of my problems."

"Oo-kay," Sookie said skeptically. "If you need anything, call, okay Hon?"

"Sure thing," Lorelai said. "Thanks Sookie."

She put the phone down after hanging up with Sookie and sighed. So much for trying to forget what this day was, what it should have been. No one was going to let her forget what it was, she realized. She'd only been up ten minutes, and her mood had gotten progressively darker as the minutes ticked by.

She spent an extra long time in the shower, letting the warm water comfort and sooth her. But as hard as she tried, she couldn't ignore her thoughts completely. She consistently came back to wondering what she would have been doing on this day if she was, in fact, getting married on this day, and then her stomach would twinge when she realized that she wasn't making up some crazy 'what if' scenario–she really was supposed to be getting married on this day, at one point. Married to Luke. But now she wasn't, and not only that– this is where her stomach twinged with guilt– she wasn't even with him anymore.

She couldn't stop the thoughts. There would be no stopping them, she realized. She'd just have to deal.

By the time she got out of the shower, she heard noises downstairs–the unmistakably familiar footsteps and humming of Rory.

"Rory?" she called down the stairs from the bedroom.

"Mom?" Rory's voice returned. "You're out of the shower! Good, okay. Come down here, I brought you all kinds of good stuff."

Lorelai sighed. "Be right down."

After dressing and putting her hair up in a messy bun, unable to force herself to care what she looked like on this day-- after all, it wasn't like she was getting married or anything-- Lorelai forced herself downstairs where she found Rory proudly standing in front of a mass of food on the living room table, a smile that was an indication of perky Rory.

"Anything you want, you got it!" Rory said, snapping her fingers. "Your wish is my command. I brought Chinese from Al's, lots of it so it will last the whole day, and in the freezer are a few flavors of ice-cream from the Soda Shoppe, didn't know which you'd be in the mood for, though I thought today would be a Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate day, so I got you two of those. In the oven is lots of frozen goodness, pizza rolls, mozzarella sticks, frozen egg rolls, all that jazz. And here we have a lot of pastries and donuts from Weston's," Rory indicated the rest of the food on the table. "And if there's anything here you don't have that you want, just name it and I'm on it."

"Wow, Hon," Lorelai forced a smile, kissing Rory on the cheek in greeting and appreciation. "You really went all out. There was no need for this."

"Mom," Rory said, looking at Lorelai seriously. "You have to just relax and wallow today," Rory said, giving the opposite advice of Sookie, which somehow irritated Lorelai– who were they to tell her how to spend the day, anyway? "Just let it be a day to deal with how you're feeling. Don't try to act like you're okay if you're not–"

"Rory, thank you, and no offense, but I think I'd do better if I'm not calling attention to what today is all day long."

"I also got movies!" Rory went on, ignoring her mother. "And they're all safe topics, nothing about weddings, no romance, nothing like that, but a lot of horror, stupid comedies, things like that."

"Horror," Lorelai said. "I feel like my life belongs in a horror movie right now."

"Mom, come on," Rory said softly. "Today sucks, I know, but we can get through this!"

"Look, I really appreciate everything you've done here," Lorelai gestured at everything around them. "But I really just need to deal with today in my own way."

"Alone?" Rory asked, and before Lorelai could answer, she added. "No way. I'm not leaving you alone today."

Lorelai sighed and sat down on the couch. "That's fine," she admitted. "I don't even get you home for the summer anymore, now that you live on your own and not at school. I'll take the time with you any way I can get it. But I just don't want to bring up the reason for you being here all day long."

"Deal. And I'm taking summer school right now," Rory rationalized. "Once that's done I could come home and spend some time here. I'd like to spend part of the summer with you."

"That'd be nice," Lorelai said softly.

"Okay, good, so that's a plan then." Rory watched Lorelai stare straight ahead at the blank TV screen. "Mom, are you sure you're okay?"

"I haven't been okay in a long time," Lorelai admitted.

"Well you want to watch something, then? I have the movies, we may as well watch them, right?"

Lorelai shook her head. "I can't watch movies."

"Why not?"

"Something will remind me."

"Remind you of what?" there was no response. "Of Luke?" Rory guessed. "I told you, these aren't romantic movies--"

"Everything reminds me of him. Movies, TV, music, all of it. Even if it's not about romance or relationships or whatever, there's always something. I've stopped watching movies and I've stopped watching TV, and I've stopped listening to music."

"I'm really worried about you," Rory decided. "This isn't healthy, Mom. You don't do anything but work--"

"I told you, everything else reminds me of him somehow. I don't even like being in this house."

"This can't go on like this," Rory stated adamantly. "It's been almost a month and you're really still way too depressed. Even last time when you and Luke broke up, you started getting better faster."

"Last time was different," she said with a shrug. "This time, the way it ended, the look on his face, it was all my fault."

"It wasn't all your fault." Rory insisted. "He screwed up, too, Mom, remember? That's how you two got to the position you were in. He lied to you, and he kept you out of his life--"

"I know!" Lorelai interrupted, snapping suddenly. "He did. He lied to me, and he shut me out, and he hurt me. But what kind of world do we live in where it's fair to hurt someone just because they hurt you first? What about that whole, 'two wrongs don't make a right,' and 'treat others how you want to be treated,' crap they teach in elementary school? It wasn't my fault that I got into my car and drove to Boston and knocked on Christopher's door?"

"Well, sure, but--"

"It wasn't my fault that I didn't stop things with Christopher that night?"

"Yes," Rory said, suddenly serious. "All of that was your fault."

"He came looking for me the next morning," Lorelai said sadly. "If I hadn't been with Chris, then we would've worked things out. Not just pretend worked them out like we had been for months, but really and truly worked things out, after I finally spoke up about everything. It was completely my fault that we didn't get the chance to do that. It was my fault by not speaking up sooner, and it was my fault for not giving him a chance to fix things after that night. I dropped all that on him and before I even gave him a chance to fix what was wrong, I was…" she stopped suddenly. "Well you know."

"Let's just watch Little Rascals," Rory said, unsure of how to proceed with the topic Lorelai had brought up, holding up the DVD box. "We've never watched it on DVD before," she pointed out.

"Fine," Lorelai gave in. "Little Rascals it is."

"I think you'll enjoy it. How does anyone not enjoy this movie? It's impossible not to. Besides, it's an awesome pick me up."

There was silence before Lorelai added, "I'm just saying, it's my fault, too, that I'm sitting here like this on this day," she tried to explain to Rory. "It's my fault, too and so I shouldn't be here wallowing like I'm the only one who was wronged."

"Yeah," Rory agreed. "It is your fault, too. But that doesn't mean you have to suffer all day, or all the time for that matter. You should try and just relax, have some fun. And we're going to have some fun beginning with Little Rascals!""

Lorelai couldn't help but laugh. "Okay, fine. Put it on."

"Yes!" Rory said with excitement, jumping up to put the DVD in. "I remember the first time I watched this movie."

"The first fifty times," Lorelai corrected. "You watched it over and over until I swear you had all the lines memorized."

Rory chuckled. "It's a classic!"

Lorelai smiled. "I remember the first time I made…" she trailed off, her smile disappearing. "See, this is why I can't watch movies."

"The first time you made what?"

"The first time I made Luke watch it," she finished. "It was sometime last year when you and I weren't talking," she clarified.

"Oh," Rory said, suddenly realizing what a year her mother had had. Not only had she been going through a lot with Luke lately, before that she had been going through crap with her.

"Mom?"

"Hmm?"

"I'm sorry you've had such a crappy year."

"Me too," Lorelai said absentmindedly. "Little Rascals?" she asked, signaling Rory to start the movie.

Rory agreed with a nod and pressed play, sending them into silence for the duration of the movie. Rory continuously wondered if Lorelai was actually watching the movie, or taking the time of silence to brood, but she let her be until there was a knock on the door not long after the movie ended.

"Hey Suga!" Babette said, peering at Lorelai seriously when she opened the door. "How ya holdin' up, dear?"

"Babette," Lorelai said, forcing a smile. "Hi. I'm okay."

"Really? I mean it is June 3rd and all."

"Yes, today is the third of June. Yesterday was the second of June, and get this: tomorrow will be the fourth of June. They're all just days, Babette."

"Well, look at you, bein' all strong and everything."

"I'll be fine," Lorelai assured her. "Is that the only reason you came over, to check up on me?"

"Just wanted to make sure you were dealin' with everything okay, Doll."

"I'm fine, really. Besides, Rory's here."

Babette nodded. "Saw her car in the drive. Just thought I'd poke my head in anyway, since Luke's actin' all grumpy, thought you might be, too."

Lorelai's heart skipped a beat at the surprise mention of Luke's name. For weeks, everyone in the town had avoided mentioning Luke's name, or even the diner to her and now suddenly, there it was. Luke.

"Luke?" Lorelai asked, trying to sound casual.

"Oh yeah. The diner's empty, 'cause he's been throwin' people out left and right and hasn't been a very friendly guy today. Not that he ever really is, but it's worse than normal today."

"Oh," Lorelai nodded. "Guess that makes sense."

"Anyway, Doll, I didn't mean to bring him up around you," Babette said, patting Lorelai on the back. "I should get home, Morey's waiting, but if you want anything, just gimme a holler. I'm making brownies in a bit, maybe you'll wanna come over and have a few later."

"Thanks, Babette," Lorelai said. "Maybe. We'll see. Rory's kind of already stuffing me to the brim.

Babette chuckled. "Okay then. I'm just a few feet away, remember that, Sugar. See you later!" and Babette was off on her way across the yard.

"God, what is it with this town?" Lorelai said angrily after she closed the door behind Babette with a slam. "Why can't they just let people be?"

"They just care about you," Rory pointed out. "It's the thought that counts."

Lorelai sighed. "Yeah, yeah. If I get one more look of pity, though, I swear… that doesn't make it easier for me, I hope they know that."

"They're trying to help."

There was a long pause before Lorelai finally spoke again.

"Luke's grumpy."

Rory nodded. "Of course he is."

"But he didn't even want to get married on this day anyway," Lorelai pointed out stubbornly, knowing it wasn't completely true.

"Yes he did. Despite everything, he did."

"I hate this."

Rory nodded. "I know."

Rory stayed with her for the rest of the night, watching movies and talking to her about Britney Spears and other random celebrities that Rory came across in the issue of People that she flipped through. Lorelai kept up the conversation and pretended to watch the movies, but her mind wasn't really there. Rory good-naturedly ignored the tears that fell down her face for a few minutes during Home Alone, knowing she wouldn't want to talk about anything and wouldn't want to acknowledge that she had been crying. The first rule of June 3rd was apparently, Rory had learned quickly, not to discuss it.

Patty came by, offering Lorelai some tequila, and Lane came by to "hang out" with Lorelai and Rory for a bit. The night wore on and Lorelai found herself feeling worse the later it got. Eventually Lane left and Rory began planning her overnight stay, which prompted Lorelai to talk Rory into going back home for the night.

"It's Saturday night, I can stay!" Rory protested at Lorelai's suggestion that she go back to her apartment.

"I know, Sweets, but you have to work in the morning."

"Not that early. I can get up and drive back before work."

"Rory, it's already 11:30, just go home, you'll be more comfortable and less rushed tomorrow morning before work. I'm fine."

"I can't leave you tonight," Rory insisted, crossing her arms stubbornly.

"You've already been here all day today with me, and I appreciate that. But I'll be fine."

"Mom--"

"Rory, tonight was supposed to be my wedding night," Lorelai cut in bluntly, and Rory closed her mouth and looked down. "And I don't want you to think I don't appreciate what you've done for me today, how you've been there for me, because I do. But I think I just need to be alone tonight."

Rory nodded. "I get you," she said solemnly. Despite all her protests about leaving her alone earlier, she knew Lorelai and she knew that she was being serious about needing the time alone. "But are you completely sure that alone is what you want?"

Lorelai nodded. "I just need to be alone. I'm sure. I'll be good."

"Okay," she got up and kissed Lorelai on the cheek. "But if you change your mind and want me, I can be here in a flash, keep that in mind."

"Will do. Thanks."

Rory pulled on her coat and pulled her mother into a tight hug. "I love you."

"I love you too," Lorelai replied, kissing Rory on the forehead. "Now get going."

"Alright, alright, I'm gone," Rory teased, grabbing her bag and heading out the door. "Call me tomorrow!"

Lorelai watched Rory get into her car and drive away, waving as she pulled out of the driveway.

Sighing, Lorelai made her way up the stairs to the bedroom, where she changed into pajama pants. Pausing in front of the closet, she couldn't help but open the door and look behind her dresses for the garment bag that had been hidden there since March, when she finally couldn't bear to look at it anymore.

The perfect dress.

She hadn't looked at it since breaking up with Luke, but she was consistently tempted to look, like it was some sort of train wreck that she didn't want to see but wanted to look at anyway.

It still looked as perfect as ever, and she had almost forgotten how much she loved it. She sighed and wiped at the tears that were threatening to fall, realizing that she could have been wearing this dress at this moment, had things been different. She could have finally let it be put to use. Instead, it was sitting in it's garment bag in the back of the closet, sad and lonely, no closer to being put to use today than it was the day she bought it. Maybe she never should have let Luke see her in it, she reasoned. Everyone knew that was bad luck, but she had thought that was just some stupid superstition. Unfortunately, everything seemed to start going horribly wrong from that moment on. She wasn't even sure why she still had the dress–it was clearly never going to get used and it wasn't a keepsake since it had never been used. She should get rid of it, put the pain behind her. But she couldn't bring herself to do it.

At least, she remembered with a sad smile, she had gotten to see the look on Luke's face when he saw her in the dress. She would never forget the look of awe and adoration he had on his face when she came down the stairs in the dress that night. She could see it all right there in his face; how much he loved her, how beautiful she was to him and how lucky he thought he was.

And she hadn't even had her hair and make up done, and it hadn't even been their real wedding.

If only she had remembered that face the night she went to Christopher.

She bit her lip, trying to keep from crying when she heard a knock at the door. Sighing, she headed down the stairs, wondering which townsperson would be on her doorstep now.

Her breath caught in her throat when she pulled the door open and found out which one of them was there.

"H… hey," she said softly.

"Hi," Luke replied, matching her soft tone then glancing down at his feet nervously.

"What's up?" she asked, and their eyes locked in a way that she knew they both knew what was up.

"I just…" he sighed. "Today's been weird for me."

"Me too," she assured him quickly.

"I thought so. Even after everything…"

"Of course it is," she snapped, suddenly turning defensive. "If you really think what happened with Christopher changed anything about how I feel about you… well, it didn't. It's totally expandable. We could lift it right out and I'd feel the same about you now as I did… whenever, pick your favorite memory of us. Then."

"Look, I'm not here to do this, Lorelai. I'm not here to fight."

"Good," she managed to reply with a sigh, recalling their last encounter. "Because I don't have it in me today."

"I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay," he said softly.

"Well, I'm not, really," she admitted, willing herself not to cry. But seeing Luke on this day was bringing all kinds of new pain to her. She sniffled to hold in the tears. "You know, when I set the date, everyone said it was so soon. You said it was soon. Even I said it was soon because I knew it was soon, most people don't plan weddings for only four months in advance. But God, I just remember it seemed so far. That was back in January, it was snowing, it was winter, and we, or I guess I, was planning a wedding for June, spring, sunshine, almost summer. I just wanted it so much that it seemed so damn far even though everyone kept saying it was so damn soon."

He nodded. "I know. Lorelai…"

She found all her feelings about the day suddenly tumbling out of her mouth. "Before we even broke up, I had no idea how I'd make it through this day, knowing that we should be married and we wouldn't be. And then it got worse, because then I didn't even have you anymore by the time this day came around. Before we broke up, I at least… I had this hope that you and I would do something together today, you know? So that we'd know we were still us, still together, still going to get married one day. And now, here it is, this day that at one point I could not wait for, then I started to dread, and all that's a lie. I don't even have you anymore. For a date that was supposedly so soon, a lot of crap sure managed to happen in that short amount of time," she choked on her own voice, and reached up to wipe at the tears that were falling down her cheeks. "I don't even have an engagement ring anymore. And all I can think about is how at one point it was actually a plan that right now, on this date, I should have been married to you, I should have had two rings on my finger, and here I don't even have one."

Luke looked down at his feet, unsure of what to do or what to say, and feeling awkward for standing in her doorway having this conversation.

"I know," he assured her. "I keep thinking the same thing, that we should have been married by now, today. And it's all my fault we're not. Because of stupid choices, most of them by me, we ended up like this… not married, not engaged, not even together. Not even friends."

"And we've always been friends."

"Yeah."

"And you know what sucks? It's never going to stop. I know that every year on this date I'll think of how many years we should have been married by then. I'll imagine what you would have given me on our anniversary and what we would have done to celebrate. I'll fantasize about the whole damn thing to the point that I think it's real and go around with a memory of you giving me a diamond necklace on June 3, 2010."

"For the fourth anniversary? Diamonds are the 60th, Lorelai."

She stared at him for a moment and through her tears she couldn't help but laugh at the seriousness of his comment.

For a second, she forgot that they weren't the Luke and Lorelai they had always been. For a second, he forgot that there was no longer any way possible that June 3, 2010 would be their fourth wedding anniversary.

"So, I, uh… should go?" Luke questioned. "I just wanted to make sure that you were doing okay." He paused and admitted, "I just wanted to see you."

Lorelai shrugged, and wondered, momentarily about his presence. She was reminded of The Way We Were and her tearful speech to Luke on the phone after their first break up. 'He was her best friend, and she needed her best friend.' Maybe that's what he was looking for. Maybe that's what she needed, too. "Go, if you want."

"Do you… do you want me to stay?" Luke asked, confused, but Lorelai could tell he would accept if she offered.

"I don't know. Is there anyway that just for today, just for today and what it is, we could forget everything for a little while? Just for one night?"

"And everything would be…?"

"Everything. Our failed engagement, our failed wedding plans, our failed relationship, our failed friendship, everything that's failed. That fight we had last week, Christopher and Anna and everything about our relationship that made it suck towards the end. Just look deep inside yourself and just find that unbreakable friendship that's always been there, somewhere, and focus only on that? For one night."

He was silent for a moment. "I can try," he decided. "For one night. Can you?"

"I most certainly can." She shrugged. "I know a lot has happened, and I can't even imagine that you'd voluntarily be standing here, but…"

"Lorelai," he interrupted, and for once she actually stopped talking when he tried to break in. "You're always going to be my best friend."

She nodded, unable to look him in the eyes for fear she would begin to cry. "Want some tea?"

"Tea would be great."

She stepped aside and let him in. Maybe she didn't want to be alone tonight after all. Maybe she just needed to be with the person she was supposed to be with on this night all along.

She got him his tea and he sat down at the kitchen table. She made herself a cup of coffee before sitting down across from him. He took one look at her cup and then back up at her, and couldn't help but smile at the familiarity of it all. She smiled back at him, and hated that she was still comforted by the simple presence of Luke, because she didn't think she should be allowed that anymore. He wasn't a part of her life anymore, she couldn't only feel better about her life when he was around. She was going to have to remember how to feel better about her life without his presence, if she had any hope of ever being happy again.

Luke sat silently, playing with his mug for a few moments. She could barely even look at Luke without feeling the guilt in her stomach. Every time she looked at him, she remembered what she did to him. She remembered how much she loved him, and how she had hurt him in the worst possible way. She had no idea how he could sit in the same room as her, even be around her, after what she'd done. But for some reason, he was.

"I was planning something," Luke admitted suddenly, jolting her from her thoughts.

"What?" she asked, surprised that he'd broken the silence.

"For June 3rd. For today. Before, you said something about how you hoped that we'd do something together…" he trailed off. "I was planning something for us."

"You… you were?" she asked softly, casting her eyes downward, unable to look him in the eye.

He nodded. "It was going to be something in New York," he said. "I know you love it there, and since I don't we don't really go there that often. I was going to get tickets for some kind of show, but I hadn't decided which one yet. Rory was going to help."

Lorelai bit her lip. "Oh."

"But then everything happened."

She nodded in understanding. "Well thank you anyway," she said softly. "That would have been an amazing day."

"I knew it was going to be hard for you," he told her. "Today. I may have been oblivious about a lot of things lately, but I knew how much this was going to hurt you."

She stared down at her hands, which were folded in her lap, and wondered how they got here. "So many ways this day could have been one hundred times better than this," she stated.

"Yeah," Luke agreed. "No kidding."

They both returned to momentary silence before Lorelai spoke up. "I promised this would never happen to us." Luke looked over at her in answer. "When you asked me to the wedding and brought me the flowers and kissed me, I made myself promise that I wouldn't hurt you, because you were too important to me to hurt. I made myself promise that I wouldn't do something to lose you, because I couldn't lose you, because you're my best friend. And look what's happened."

"You shouldn't hold yourself accountable to promises like that," he said. "Life happens, you don't have control over it."

"I guess," she said with a heavy sigh.

"I promised myself the same thing, you know," he said quietly. "I promised I wouldn't screw up with you because I hate seeing you hurt, and I didn't want to risk losing you altogether."

She nodded, and kept her eyes on her mug just as he had earlier.

"Promises were made to be broken, I guess," she said sadly.

"Not always," he said. She wasn't sure what he was implying with that statement, but she decided not to press it–she might get an answer she didn't want to hear.

"So how's the diner?" she asked casually.

"It's okay, the usual. It was really quiet today, for some reason, actually."

Lorelai kept back her knowing smile and nodded. "That's good, though. A nice break."

"Yeah, I suppose. I sent some customers over to the inn today."

She looked up from her cup. "Oh really?"

"They were stopping at the diner on their way through Connecticut and decided they wanted to spend the night here somewhere and asked for recommendations."

This had been their little joke, the past two years. They found that customers were often asking for recommendations of places to eat or places to stay, and it had become blasphemous to send them anywhere other than to the diner or the inn, and it was like an inside joke the customer never got. Lorelai had joked that they were unofficial affiliates, which had prompted a whole slew of jokes from her end for months.

"Nice to know I haven't lost shameless promotion."

Luke smiled. "Has it been busy? The inn? With summer coming up and all…"

"Memorial Day weekend was pretty busy, but nothing too bad yet. Fourth of July is when it gets crazy, judging by years past." There was another silence in the conversation, so she added, "How's April?"

"She's good," Luke said quickly, uncomfortable with the subject, knowing it was part of the reason they were in the situation they were in. "Rory?"

"Good," Lorelai said softly. "She was just here, you just missed her." Luke nodded, and they fell into an awkward silence again. Lorelai looked up and offered him a sad smile. "We kind of suck at the small talk, huh?"

"We were doing okay, but now that you've called attention to it it's a lost cause."

She chuckled, and looked over at the clock on the oven. "12:03."

"June 4th," Luke noted.

"Yeah," Lorelai said, suddenly overcome with the urge to cry. The day that was supposed to be her wedding day was over–and she wasn't married. And here she was, sitting with the man who was supposed to have been her husband, and they couldn't even keep up small talk. "June 3, 2006 is officially over, never to come again."

Luke nodded, and he looked down to avoid letting her see the sadness in his eyes. "I should go," he said, standing up. "Thanks for the tea."

Lorelai stood up and followed him to the door. "Sure, anytime. Thanks for…" she sighed. "Thanks for coming over. It really meant a lot."

He nodded. "Thanks for asking me to stay. It was good to see you… you know, especially on this- that- day."

She nodded, and they stood awkwardly at the door, and she had to fight, really hard, the urge to lean in and kiss him on the cheek. Instead, she found her voice, which always seemed to bail her out of situations where she didn't know what else to do but talk. "You'll always be mine, too," she said, and she knew he understood what she was saying from his nod and sympathetic smile, that he'd always be her best friend, too.

"I'm sorry," he said softly, and she wasn't sure for what, but she was pretty sure he was apologizing for everything, including never giving her the future he'd promised her.

"I'm sorry too," she said softly. He nodded and gave her a small wave, and before she could blink twice, he was gone.

She sighed after closing the door. What had just happened? Luke had come over, of his own free will, and talked to her like she wasn't the most disgusting person on the planet, and they hadn't yelled once. But at the same time, nothing had changed. They weren't friends, they weren't back together, and there wasn't even an unspoken agreement that they could be decent acquaintances, were they to run into each other in Doose's or was Lorelai to want a cup of coffee at the diner. It had only been for one night.

But at least, she thought, at least this new last memory of him was a positive one.

That night, she cried herself to sleep again, for the first time in weeks, in the bed that she knew should have been hers and Luke's by now, for good, forever. But wasn't. Because her wedding day had passed her by without a wedding.

tbc...


	5. Two Tickets

On her way to the bank, Lorelai took a deep breath as she approached Luke's. As usual, she began to quicken her pace significantly as she past the diner, hoping to make it by without catching a glimpse of Luke and even better, without a chance for Luke to catch a glimpse of her. It usually worked if she picked up the pace and kept her head down, and she usually made it past the diner without seeing Luke and without Luke seeing her as far as she knew.

Today, however, it didn't work. As soon as she breezed past the door, she heard the bell jingle and heard Luke calling after her.

"Lorelai!"

She stopped in her tracks suddenly and turned to face Luke, who was looking at her with a puzzled expression.

"Luke, hi."

"In a hurry?" he questioned her pace with a smirk.

"No, uh… no, that's okay."

"What's this?" he asked, getting down to the reason he'd stopped her, holding up two tickets to a Red Sox game for her to see.

"Looks like Red Sox tickets to me. You sure you're a baseball fan? Because you think you'd know what a ticket to a game looked like if you really were."

"I know what they are," he clarified even though he knew she knew what he was really saying and was just avoiding it. "I mean, why are they here? You sent them to me."

"I know I did," she said with a sigh, wondering why he had to question this whole situation. "Didn't you read the note I sent with them?"

"Yes."

"So that explains why I sent them."

"For Father's Day?" he asked with a frown.

"Yes, for Father's Day."

"I still don't understand why…" he shrugged. "I mean after everything that's happened and… why would you send me this?"

"Because it's Father's Day and you're a father, so you get a gift. That's how it works."

"From my ex fiancée who has no children with me?"

She ignored the double pain that came at the use of ex fiancée followed by the reminder that she and Luke never got to have kids together, after all. "Fine, if you don't want them, I'll take them back," she said, reaching out for the tickets. He pulled them away and shook his head.

"No, I appreciate them, I do. I'm just confused and frankly this is just a little awkward."

"Look, Luke, I just wanted to kind of thank you for being able to put all our crap behind us on June 3rd. I wanted to be able to do the same thing for you, so I thought I'd send you these. I figured you could go with April or something. Now, she doesn't seem like a really sporty type of kid, but she might have fun. If not, maybe you could go with Jess or TJ or whoever you usually round up for baseball games. It was just supposed to be a nice gesture and that's it, and it's just," she took a deep breath, "It's your first Father's Day and I always thought I'd be apart of that." It was odd, she thought, that they were saying more to each other now that they were broken up than they had in the past year when they were struggling to make everything work.

"Oh," he said softly. "Well, thank you," he said sincerely.

"You're welcome," she sighed contemplating whether she should go on or not. Going on won. "And besides, so much happened between you and me since April came into the picture that I never really… I tried to show you by being supportive and respecting your space and letting you postpone the wedding, but all that backfired… and so I wanted you to know that I think you've been an awesome father to April so far and I think what you've done, how you jumped right in as a part of her life and were so dedicated to her, is really great."

Luke blushed slightly and looked down. "Oh. Thank you," he said again, with even more sincerity in his voice. "That means a lot to me… especially from you."

"You're welcome. I mean it. I really respect you for how you've dealt with this situation in regards to April. And I never really got the chance to show you that before. So I am now. Happy Father's Day."

Luke nodded and looked down with a sigh. "I never would have thought this is how I'd spend my first Father's Day," he admitted. "I never thought it would be to a girl who was already thirteen and that you'd be rushing past the diner as fast as you could like you always do these days," Lorelai looked down, realizing she'd been caught, "to avoid me, and that you'd be sending me tickets to a Red Sox game telling me that even though I managed to ruin our relationship because of my choices, you still respect me for what I've done with my kid?" he shrugged. "Never really what I pictured."

"Yeah," she managed a light chuckle. "Not really predictable, huh?"

"Not really. And more than that I always thought it would be…" he trailed off, not wanting to vocalize the rest of his thought.

"I know," she said quickly, reading his thoughts. "I never thought that when you first celebrated Father's Day I'd be sending you tickets as a gift for a holiday you'd be celebrating with no help from me whatsoever."

"Thank you for the tickets," he said, looking down at them in his hand before looking up at her again. "Really Lorelai, thank you."

"You're welcome. Enjoy them."

"I will," he assured her, and she was off on her way down the street, almost as fast as every other time she'd walked past the diner in the past month.

xxxxxx

"So I didn't think baseball would be your thing," Luke told April as they settled into their seats at the Red Sox game, tickets courtesy of Lorelai.

"Well, it's not, really," she confirmed. "But physics play an important part in most sports, so…"

"Right."

"And besides, who wouldn't love hot dogs and nachos?"

Luke rolled his eyes. "The cheese on those nachos is crap. It's probably right out of a can and probably contains five hundred different chemicals."

"Well, it tastes good," April said with a shrug, licking a bit of said cheese off her finger and then popping a nacho into her mouth.

"Well that's something then," Luke gave in.

"How long do you think until the Red Sox win the World Series again?"

Luke let out a sigh. "Who knows? I have a feeling it's going to be a long time before that happens again."

"Are you one of those freaky baseball fans who's so dedicated to his team that he can feel what's going to happen before it happens?"

"Nah," he said, waving the thought off. "Though I did have a feeling they'd win in '04. I knew it from the start of the playoffs."

"So you are one of those freaky fans," April raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not a freaky fan," Luke protested.

"I bet you flipped when they won," April went on. "I remember watching, and I hate sports, but everyone was so excited about it that Mom and I had to watch." She paused. "We were rooting for the Red Sox, don't worry. What was the fun in it if the Yankees won again? Anyway, we were all excited when they won, I can only imagine how you flipped."

"Yeah," Luke recalled the memory. "Lorelai thought I had been replaced by some sort of pod Luke that night when they won. That's all she kept saying. 'Where's the real Luke? My stoic Luke would never show this much emotion, especially about something on the silly TV.'"

April giggled. "Where has Lorelai been lately?"

Luke froze suddenly. "Busy. Working, spending time with Rory…"

"You haven't talked about her lately."

"Well…"

"I mean, you've never really talked about her that much to me for some reason, but after my party you were bringing her up a lot more often and then you just stopped. And you don't even get those phone calls where you start smiling and laughing and everyone knows it's Lorelai on the other end anymore. Did something happen?"

"Lorelai and I, we're just… you know, she gave us the tickets to come here today," Luke said, hoping that would make April believe that Lorelai was still around.

"I know, you told me," April rolled her eyes. "But I'm thirteen years old and I'm an honor student. I know when things are up, and something's up between you and Lorelai."

"We're just…" Luke sighed, deciding to be honest. "Well, we broke up."

April's face seemed to fall. "Why?"

"A lot of things."

"Was it because of me?" she asked suddenly, her eyes widening with worry. "You and Lorelai seemed fine at my party, so it must have been after that. It wasn't because of my party, was it?"

"No, it wasn't because of your party. Lorelai loved helping with your party."

"Then why? Was it because of me? If it was because of me, you have to tell me, Luke," she pleaded.

"It wasn't because of you," Luke told April confidently, looking her in the eyes. "It was because of me and because of Lorelai, and that's it."

"Well how come she never came into the diner when I was there?" April persisted. "She was your fiancée but she never came into the diner any of the times I was hanging out there? And how come we never did anything with her? And how come we never went over to her place, which was your place, too, right? Was she mad at me for coming into your life? Did she not want to be around me?"

"Oh God, April, no," Luke said, realizing, again, how badly his actions had impacted the people around him without him realizing. "No, that's not it at all. Lorelai wanted to get to know you, she really wanted to be around you, but I was just… I wasn't ready for that, for a lot of reasons. I wanted to get to know you first and I pushed her away for no good reason. That's why she jumped at the chance to help with your party," Luke explained. "She was so ready to meet you. She wanted to help with the party even before I couldn't make it fun. She wanted to help me pick out your gift. But I just kept saying no."

April nodded. "Okay. Just as long as it wasn't me who made her leave."

"No, it wasn't you," Luke assured April again, putting a hand on her shoulder and giving it a squeeze. "Not at all. It was me."

"I really liked Lorelai," April said, somewhat sadly. "She's really fun."

"She is," Luke agreed.

"And she's funny."

"Yeah. She is."

"And she's really pretty."

"She's gorgeous."

"It's too bad you two broke up."

"Yeah. It is," Luke sighed. "I was afraid to let her get to know you. I thought you'd like her better than me and want to spend time with her instead of me," he admitted suddenly, thinking that maybe if April had a reason for why he'd kept her and Lorelai apart that she wouldn't think it was because Lorelai didn't want to be around her.

"What?" April laughed at this as if it was impossible. "Why would I like her better?"

"Because. You just said it, she's fun and funny and pretty, not to mention crazy and smart and sweet--"

"But you're my dad," April protested, as if that explained it all and, Luke noticed, in the same way Lorelai had once told him the same thing. "And besides, I think you're pretty fun, too. And it would be weird if I thought you were pretty."

Luke smiled at that. "It was just me being irrational. And I'm sorry if I made you think she didn't want to be around you. That's not true at all."

April nodded, and Luke and April fell into a comfortable silence until a vendor selling cotton candy walked by.

"Ooh!" April's eyes widened at the cotton candy. "Dad, can we get some?"

"Oh come on, that's just pure sugar …" Luke stopped as he realized what she had said.

"It's a baseball game! Come on, I came with you here and I don't really like sports."

"Fine," Luke agreed, trying to act irritated but unable to hide his grin.

xxxxxx

After the baseball game with April (Red Sox lost, which bummed April out, but caused her to perk up when Luke told her they could come to another game soon), Luke kept hearing her words in his head, calling her 'Dad.' She'd referred to him as 'my dad,' before, but she'd never used it as his name. She'd called him Luke since that day she appeared in the diner, and he hadn't thought much of it.

However, despite the fact that he hadn't been dwelling on the fact that she called him Luke and not Dad, he was extremely beside himself when she'd bestowed the title on him.

And what hurt him the most was that his first reaction was to tell Lorelai. His immediate, subconscious reaction was that he couldn't wait to tell Lorelai. Then he remembered, they didn't do that anymore. They weren't a part of each other's lives anymore. They didn't even talk, even like friends, anymore. They didn't share things anymore.

And suddenly, he wondered, when the last time they actually did share things was. He'd completely shut her out of so many aspects of his life the last few months they were together, he hadn't even realized until she was hysterical the night they broke up. He didn't include her in his visits with April. He would have loved to, had he not been so damn insecure about April liking Lorelai more than him, which he had been sure would happen. He thought it was only fair, that he get a chance to bond with April first. After all, if he had known about April from the start, then he would have had all those years to get to know her on his own, to secure his bond with her.

But that was the thing. He hadn't been in April's life since day one. When she came into his life, Lorelai was already a part of it. And he tried to push her out to recreate those years with April that he had lost, which wasn't Lorelai's fault.

She had been right; about at least one thing that night she had asked him to elope. He was supposed to figure out how April fit into their life, their life that had already been established and that they were working on building, not how Lorelai suddenly fit into his life with April. To her he had just seemingly forgotten about everything they had been working towards, and he realized now how he came across and how much that hurt her. He had suddenly pushed her out of his life where April was concerned. It was the biggest thing that had ever happened to him, finding out he was a father, and he hadn't let her, the most important person in his life, be a part of it.

He'd come to realize all of this, how badly he had messed things up between him and Lorelai, recently. How it hadn't been fair to her, the way he had treated her. How it had hurt her so much, and he began to understand why she had been so upset. How, despite all her pain, and despite how much she wanted to be let in and how much she wanted to get married, she went along with Luke's ideas of how to deal with the April situation, and she went along with postponing the wedding, because she was trying to be supportive.

And he hadn't paid one damn bit of attention to her or what she was doing for him.

He'd turned her into this messed up, sad, upset, confused, insecure person.

And he hadn't even taken the time to care.

He pulled up at the Nardini house, April chattering excitedly about the game in the passenger seat.

"… and I know I said I don't like sports, but maybe baseball is kind of fun!"

Luke chuckled. "Well, you've got the gear now," he noted, gesturing to the Red Sox cap on her head, backwards of course, and the big foam finger she'd insisted she had to have to prove she'd been to a sporting event, on her hand.

"And I've never even been to Boston," she stated. "In fact, I've been to New York tons of times. But I think I'm a Red Sox girl. Besides, you're a Red Sox fan, so that's reason enough to be one."

Luke noted the adoration in April's eyes, and for the first time he realized that she was truly his daughter and he was her father, and not in the awkward way they had been for many months. Suddenly she was the kid who didn't like sports but would go to a game to spend time with her dad and who would root for his team just because it was his. And he was the guy who would grin at the word 'Dad,' and buy all kinds of crap for his kid on a special outing, just because he liked that it made her smile the way she did.

"I better get inside," April said.

"I'll walk you," Luke offered.

"No bad guys are lurking in the bushes, we've been over this before."

"I know," Luke assured her, "but it's the right thing to do. What kind of dad lets his kid walk to the door alone?"

April smiled and shrugged and hopped out of the truck and headed up the steps, Luke following her. She used her key to open the door and they found Anna right on the other side, passing by with a basket of laundry.

"Hi Mom!"

"Wow, look at you," Anna laughed, shifting the laundry basket to a more comfortable position. "I take it you had a good time."

"I had a blast!" April agreed. "Oh, can you tell Lorelai thanks for the tickets?" April asked Luke suddenly, either not remembering their break up or not realizing the extent of it.

"Oh, uh… sure," Luke agreed.

"April, Honey, Freddy called today while--"

"Freddy called?" April squeaked, staring at her mother. "He called here?"

"He sure did."

"Oh man, and it's too late to call him back," she grumbled, looking at the clock. Suddenly she perked up. "I'm gonna go see if he's online!" she declared, running off towards her room. "Thanks, Dad, for everything," she called over her shoulder.

"Did she just call you Dad?" Anna asked, raising her eyebrows. "Wow."

"Yeah, she uh… just started doing that," Luke explained somewhat awkwardly. He was never really quite sure where Anna's head was when it came to his relationship with April. "It's nice."

"Yeah, it is," Anna said softly. "Kind of strange for me to hear her say it, but it is nice for her. And for you," Anna added and Luke nodded. "So Lorelai gave you the tickets to the game today?"

"Yeah. She did, they were a Father's Day thing."

"Very cool," Anna agreed. "I haven't heard much about Lorelai lately," Anna added. "From you or from April."

"Yeah, well, things between Lorelai and I have been kind of shaky."

"Shaky?"

Luke shrugged. "I was a jerk to her and it finally caught up with us."

"Did you two break up?" Anna asked, and Luke's long pause was answer enough. "I knew it."

"You knew what?"

"When Lorelai came here to talk to me after April's party she was so sure you two were permanent and stable… but I guess I was right. I could feel it. That's why I told her that I'd feel better waiting on her forming any kind of relationship with April until after you two were actually married."

"No, no, you don't get to do that," Luke said suddenly. "You don't get to think you're right when you helped create this whole mess."

"I had nothing to do with this whole mess," Anna protested.

"I can't believe you told Lorelai that she couldn't get to know April. No wonder she started acting so strange. No wonder she wanted to elope all of a sudden…"

"What?" Anna frowned, putting the basket of laundry down. "You and Lorelai eloped? I thought you broke up."

"What you said to her that day, it had an impact on her. She never told me that she came to see you until way after the fact, she started acting weird, and she started panicking. And now part of the reason why is becoming clear. You were part of it."

"I didn't mean to upset her," Anna said sincerely. "It seemed like she understood what I was saying, she said that she has a daughter, too, she seemed to be able to relate."

"I'm sure she could," Luke agreed. "She was the same way with Rory, she never wanted her to get attached to someone who could suddenly be out of her life. So here I was, shutting her out of everything with April because I was so confused, postponing the wedding while I focused on April, and then I finally let her in and it worked so well, the three of us, and her and April, and then she finds out that you don't want her around her kid so again she's shut out of a part of my life, this time not by my choice. So she figures that the way to fix that is to get married so you'll allow her in. Get married and everything will be better. Jeez, no wonder."

"Luke…" Anna tried to jump in.

"Look, I know you raised April for twelve years on your own, and you love her more than anything. Believe me, I get that. But you didn't even give me the chance to raise her or be a part of her life in any sort of way. So I'm just learning now how to be a father. And I screw up sometimes, you've seen that a few times already. But it's not fair for you to come down so hard on me when I screw up when you're the one that took away my chance to learn how to be a father before April was thirteen."

"When have I ever come down hard on you?" Anna asked, putting her hands on her hips.

"When I was nervous about April first coming to the diner," Luke shot back. "You said maybe we should rethink our arrangement. And then when you found out that Lorelai was the one with the girls at the sleepover, you just came and yelled at me, not to mention you made it seem like I had to be careful with your kid, and forgot that she's my kid, too. She is my kid, too, you know. Just because I missed those first twelve years, not by choice by the way, shouldn't mean I'm not allowed to be a real father to her and make choices about who she's with when she's with me."

"Okay, Luke, I'm sorry," Anna apologized. "Just calm down."

"I am calm," he told her with a sigh. "I am. It just drives me crazy that you don't think of me as responsible enough to be a father to April. You didn't then and you don't now. You kept her from me, and now you don't even give me enough authority as a parent to be able to decide if I think it's okay for April to be around my best friend in the entire world, who just happens to be my fiancée of a year, who I've been with for two, and who I've been friends with for ten."

"I had no idea that you and Lorelai were that…" she couldn't find the word she was looking for. "Established. You never even told me you had a Lorelai. You never said anything to me about Lorelai. Call me crazy, but if you had someone that important in your life, wouldn't you have mentioned her?"

"You would think," Luke began to realize that he'd misled so many people lately. "But I was confused and I handled all of this wrong. I didn't tell you about Lorelai and I took too long telling Lorelai about April. I just didn't know what to do, how to handle all this, and I'm sorry for that. But that doesn't change the fact that you can't go around making judgments on my relationships with people and whether or not the relationship is stable enough to bring April into it. I get to decide that if she's going to really be a part of my life. I know I haven't known her for a long time, but I'd never want to see her hurt and I'd never put her into a position to get hurt. Lorelai and I were stable. We were good. The odds of us breaking up suddenly like we did were slim. But it happened. That's life, we have to deal with it, April included. Otherwise, what's the choice? Never have my daughter meet my fiancée until after the wedding? She doesn't even get to come to the wedding? It wasn't like I'd dated Lorelai a couple times and it was a brand new thing, she was my fiancée. Parents don't do that, they don't keep their kid from meeting the person who will be their stepmother," Luke's words rang true on more than one level. He knew he was being somewhat hypocritical, being that he had kept April from getting to know her future stepmother for months. "But you don't think of me as her parent, right?"

"It's just new for me, that's all," Anna replied carefully, playing with the hem of her t-shirt. "April is my life, and it's hard for me to deal with someone else suddenly being allowed to make choices concerning her well being. I'm sorry. I screw up as far as this whole thing is concerned, too. It's hard for me, too, and I don't know how to handle it either. I'm sorry."

Luke sighed. "No, I'm sorry. This isn't your fault and I'm just… I'm frustrated."

"I never meant to give you the impression that I don't think of you as April's parent. It's just hard for me to adjust, and I'm going to try harder not to behave like that."

Luke sighed. "Thank you. I'd appreciate it."

"And I never meant to cause problems for you and Lorelai."

"I know," Luke assured her.

"I think we all have to work together," Anna said. "You and me and Lorelai and April. This is confusing and new for all of us."

"Well none of that matters now," Luke said. "Lorelai and I aren't getting married anymore."

"I am sorry to hear that, Luke," Anna said sincerely.

Luke nodded. "I should go. Tell April I'll call her this weekend."

"Sure thing. I'll see you later."

As Luke walked away, he thought about how much he had screwed up. From realizing how he'd misled April and Anna… he could only imagine what Lorelai herself had been thinking and feeling.

How had he messed up so much? And why was he taking steps to fix it, doing what he should have done before, after it was already too late?

tbc...


	6. Two Seconds

The bells jingled above the door to the diner and Luke looked up, surprised that someone was coming in this close to closing. However, he wasn't surprised any longer when he saw who was standing there.

"Rory," he stated. "Hi." He was almost surprised this hadn't happened sooner. It was already July, and he hadn't seen Rory in a long, long time now. Probably since he ran into her in Philly, months ago.

"Hi Luke," she said shyly, giving him a smile nonetheless. "Is it okay that I'm here?"

"What? Yes, of course!" he said, surprised, coming around from the counter.

Rory looked instantly relieved. "Oh, okay, good, I wasn't sure, you know, because of… well, everything and all."

"No, Rory, of course, you're always welcome here. And even if you weren't, it is a place of business. You want to come in, you can come in."

Rory smiled at Luke's nervousness, which made her feel a bit more comfortable, herself. "Okay. Good then. But I only want to be here if it's okay with you."

"It's absolutely okay with me. Can I get you something? Coffee? Pie?"

"It's kind of late for coffee," Rory stated, and Luke momentarily noted how she had been becoming more and more Rory and less a copy of Lorelai lately. Rory drank coffee, but at reasonable times of the day. Rory preferred take out, but could also cook. Rory went to the gym, even if she didn't know what, exactly, to do with herself there yet. "But maybe some pie."

"Sure thing," Luke said, thankful for something to busy himself with and headed behind the counter again. "Apple? Boysenberry?"

"Apple would be perfect," Rory agreed. She watched as Luke put a piece of pie on a plate and placed it in front of her. "I just wanted to come by and say hi," she explained her presence. "I haven't seen you in a while. I'm not home as much lately, and when I am I'm with Mom and we don't really… come here… anymore."

"Yeah, I guess not," Luke agreed, nodding. "It's good to see you though. How's school? You're taking summer school right?"

Rory nodded. "Yeah. Almost done, though, finals this week. I'm just trying to make up that semester I missed before May, so I can graduate on time. I took six classes last semester, so if I complete these two summer school classes successfully and take two more semesters of six classes, I should make it."

Luke let out an impressed breath. " I don't know how you manage pulling stuff like this off. You really are something."

"It's not too bad, actually," Rory said modestly, taking a bite of her pie. "Just as long as I make sure one of the six classes is a somewhat easy one and it's not that much harder than taking only five."

"But you have the paper, too," Luke pointed out.

She shrugged. "Well, the paper's fun for me, so I don't really think of it as work."

Luke nodded. "That makes sense, I guess."

"So," Rory said, pushing a piece of pie around on her plate. "Uh... how's April?" she asked the only conversational question she could think of.

"She's good," Luke said quickly. "She goes to year round school, so she's actually not on summer break or anything right now. She just had a couple weeks off, though."

"That's nice," Rory commented. "And… how are you?'

Luke wasn't as quick to answer this time. "I'm… hanging in there."

Rory nodded in understanding. "I just want you to know, Luke," Rory began, "that I really hate that she did this to you."

"It's okay," Luke insisted. "It wasn't all her fault, first of all, all this, and second of all, I don't want you to be mad at your mother on my account."

"I'm not mad at her only on your account, I'm mad at her for letting herself completely ruin this. It's almost like she had to have the last word or something," Rory said with a shrug. "Like, you hurt her so she had to hurt you worse so she'd be the one who did the hurting, not the one that got hurt. It's that stupid subconscious of hers. Hurting people back when she's been hurt is a defense mechanism she doesn't realize she has." She shrugged and looked down at her plate. "And anyway over all I just hate that this happened. I hate that we can't come here anymore. I hate that I never see you anymore. I hate that Mom, and you I'm sure, are both so miserable."

"Well, that's how life works. It sucks sometimes. We just have to deal with it, get over it, and move on," Luke offered her, clearing a plate left behind from a customer who had just left the counter. "And you're always welcome here, no matter what is going on between your mom and I."

Rory smiled. "I know how you're feeling right now, Luke, I do, I get it. The same thing happened with me and Logan last year," Rory said, putting down her fork in order to focus on the conversation.

"Oh," Luke said, then her frowned, as he hadn't realized that. "Really?"

"We got into this huge fight before we broke up last fall. He thought we were over, as in finished for good, while I just thought it was a fight and we were taking some time apart. So meanwhile he slept with these other girls and I just… I was so hurt when I found out. And even though I said I forgave him and everything, I didn't really for a while. But I did eventually."

Luke sighed. "Well for us, it's… it's too complicated, there's too many issues. And that's not fair to her. I can't do that to her, be with her if I'm not really able to forgive her for what happened."

Rory nodded in complete understanding. "You love her though."

"Yes," he answered immediately.

"Despite what she did."

His answer took a moment to come this time, as if he was embarrassed to admit it. "Yes."

"This is the conclusion I came to with Logan: when you love someone, the goal is to be with them, no matter what, you know? I mean, society these days makes it seem like the right thing to do when someone hurts you is to leave them, discard the thing that causes you pain. But really I just thought screw that, I want to be with him, I'll make it work, I'll figure out how to get past his mistakes, especially since it wasn't like he cheated on me while we were together, over and over behind my back."

"When did you get so grown up?" Luke asked, leaning on the counter in front of her. "Since when do we swap relationship advice and compare problems?"

Rory smiled and shrugged. "Hey, you know we could also swap stories about significant others' parents not thinking you're good enough and not approving of your relationship with their child."

Luke laughed. "Yeah, I guess we could."

"Maybe next time."

"Sounds like a plan."

"But anyway, I didn't come here to try and give you advice," Rory shrugged. "But I am sorry this happened. I feel like it was my fault, somehow."

"How on could this have ever been your fault?" Luke asked, incredulous.

"I don't know, I just… I knew how upset she was, all those months. I knew how much postponing the wedding bothered her and how she wanted to get to know April and I never told her to speak up, really. I just let her go on without saying anything."

"Rory none of this is your fault, at all. It's mine, and it's Lorelai's, and that's it." Rory nodded and was silent. "So Logan… have you talked to him since he left?" Luke asked, changing the subject to something more casual.

"Yeah, we talk a lot. He wants me to come visit after I get out of summer classes, he said he'd pay for the flight and everything since I have no money for that. But I just… I promised Mom I'd spend time with her, she's really lonely."

Luke looked down awkwardly. "Oh."

"Sorry," Rory grimaced. "See, maybe this is why I shouldn't come here," she apologized.

"No, it's okay. I like seeing you, I'm glad you came." He paused for a moment, as a thought occurred to him suddenly. "But Rory, you know… it's okay if you want them back together."

"Who?" she asked with a frown.

"Your mom and your dad." Rory's jaw dropped. "I mean, don't think you have to sympathize with me."

"No, Luke," she said confidently. " I don't want them to get back together. I want Mom to be happy." Rory shrugged. "I mean, biology doesn't make a family. Well, it kind of does, sometimes…" Rory said, thoughtfully, "but not all the time. It's not always what's best. And definitely not in our case."

Luke nodded and realized he didn't have an answer to that. "More pie?"

Rory grinned. "Sure."

She wasn't completely different from Lorelai yet, after all.

xxxxxx

"Hey Mom," Rory greeted after her mother answered the phone.

"Hey you," Lorelai said, excited to hear from her daughter. "So? Summer school done?"

"Sure is," Rory said with a shrug that her mother couldn't see over the phone.

"You don't seem excited about it," Lorelai noted. "What's with the mood?"

"Nothing. I'm in a good mood, really. I just wanted to run an idea by you--"

"Uh oh," Lorelai teased uncomfortably. "Is this an idea like dropping out of Yale was an idea?" she was joking, but she suddenly panicked. What if Rory was going to make a choice like that again? And what if Rory was going to make a choice like that again, and she didn't have Luke around this time, to keep her from completely falling apart?

"No," Rory said with a laugh, which made Lorelai calm down. "I just… I really miss Logan."

"Sure, I get that," Lorelai said, warily. "I completely get that."

"He wants me to come visit him," Rory rushed on. "Said he'd pay for the airfare, which of course, I didn't want to accept, but he insisted on splitting it since it's something for him, too, and he's got plenty of money and he's the one working while I'm still in school… and I just, I really want to go," Rory explained. "I only have the rest of July and the beginning of August before school starts, then who knows when I'll have the chance to see him again. So… I'm going to go."

Lorelai suddenly felt empty. "You're going to go to London?"

"Yes," Rory said. "I really need to see him, Mom. I mean you said you understand, right?"

"I do, I understand," Lorelai agreed. "I'll just miss you that's all."

"I know," Rory said with a sigh. "That's why I feel kind of bad about going."

"No," Lorelai said, even though she couldn't bring herself to completely mean it. "You shouldn't feel bad about going. You need to see Logan." Then she felt like a terrible, selfish mother for wanting her twenty-one year old daughter all to herself and not wanting her to spend time with the guy she was in love with who was across the country and she missed like crazy. Just because she couldn't make her relationship work didn't mean Rory couldn't make her own work. Though the solidarity would have been nice.

"Okay. So I'm thinking of staying a month, maybe five weeks."

"That long?" Lorelai asked, surprised. "Wow."

"Well like I said, I don't know when I'll see him again."

"Huh. That's too bad, I really wanted to spend some time with you this summer."

"You will!" Rory assured her quickly. "When I get back, there'll be a week or so, all for you."

"A week or so?" Lorelai said sarcastically. "Wow, thanks."

"Are you mad at me?" Rory asked, surprised. "I see you all the time, Mom. Logan's in London. I want to spend time with him."

"I know, I understand, Rory. It's just that I thought… before you said when summer school ended you would come spend some time at home."

"That was before I thought I could make this happen," she defended herself. "Why are you trying to make me feel bad for doing this?"

"I'm not!" Lorelai said, wishing she was being more of a supportive mom and less of a needy friend at the moment, but she couldn't seem to change gears. "I was just really looking forward to seeing you for a while."

"Look, you're my mother," Rory said harshly, suddenly irritated. "And Logan's my boyfriend and I'm in love with him and well, sometimes I have to choose, And right now I'm choosing the person I'm in love with."

"I get that. I just thought that maybe you weren't thinking of me as your mother, but as that best friend you've always had. That best friend who misses you and is extremely lonely these days."

"Because of a situation she made all for herself!" Rory spat. "Look, you screwed up, okay? You ruined things with Luke, you slept with someone else. None of that is my fault. You made this big mess, you made yourself lose Luke, you made yourself lonely. So why should I have to suffer because of your lousy choices? Your choices have already lost me a stepfather who I adore and a stepsister I think I really would have liked. So don't make me lose my boyfriend, too."

Lorelai was in shock, surprised that Rory was so angry, surprised at Rory's anger for the loss of Luke in her life, surprised that Rory could be so hurtful. "Fine. Don't worry about me," Lorelai said. "I'm sorry I miss my kid. I'm sorry that I was a little taken aback by you changing the plans you'd made with me for a choice you made in, like, two seconds. Sometimes I forget, you know, that we're not equal, that you're my kid and I'm just your mother. Parents always put their kids as number one, but kids stop caring about their parents after a while. That's just life. I guess the way we've always been kind of made me forget that. So, have fun in London, say hi to Logan for me, and send me a postcard, if you can spare the time."

"I didn't make this choice in two seconds!"

"I don't care, Rory. Making a choice in two seconds is fine--"

"God, Mom, you're being so unfair!" Rory went on. "Have I ever, ever stopped you from ever doing anything with Luke, ever?"

"Well, besides the fact that I went six months without setting a wedding date, waiting for you to decide to speak to me again?"

"Oh, I see. So the fact that you and Luke never got married is my fault. Not yours. Not yours and Luke's for being so stubborn, but mine, because I didn't talk to you those few months. Is that it?"

"I didn't say that, Rory," Lorelai huffed.

"So then let me rephrase. Have I ever intentionally stopped you from being with Luke? No!"

"No, but when you need me I don't abandon you, even if it changes plans with Luke. Like, oh, say the night Luke and I first kissed and I came home to find you in the middle of breaking the seventh commandment."

"Huh. You're one to talk. At least I wasn't the one cheating on the person I was with."

"You know what, forget it. I don't know why I'd even want you around anyway if you're so angry with me for all these things."

"Mom…" Rory said, her voice suddenly softer.

"No, you said it all, I messed up, so now I deserve to be alone. You're right. Have fun in London, maybe call me when you get there just so I know you're safe? If that's not too much to ask, that is," Lorelai said, and hung the phone up angrily.

xxxxxx

After her phone call with Rory, Lorelai felt like she'd lost everyone in her life. Luke hated her for what she'd done. Rory hated her for what she'd done. Half the town was angry with her for what she'd done, even if they didn't say so outwardly. And most of all, she had already hated herself for what she'd done, anyway.

No Luke. No Rory.

What did she have left? What was she going to do with herself this summer, now? Even Sookie was way too busy with her kids and Jackson to have time to hang out. The rest of her summer seemed to be made up of working and walking Paul Anka. Maybe she could finally break some of Paul Anka's quirks. It was about time he stopped fearing newspaper, after all.

Already in a bad mood, and after spending a couple hours inside her house, pouting, she decided it couldn't hurt to take Paul Anka for a walk. Lately she disliked this activity for fear of running into Luke or someone who was deeply on Luke's side of this whole mess, but right now she didn't really care. She had bigger problems with her daughter hating her now, too.

So she got Paul Anka on his leash and they set out on a walk. She walked him around the block, before deciding she wasn't quite ready to go back inside her house and be forced to be grumpy just yet, so she decided to walk Paul Anka through the square.

Which was where she came face to face with Luke.

She was lost in her own thoughts, torn out of them suddenly when Paul Anka started barking incessantly. He didn't bark often, especially for no reason. He seemed to be barking his excited bark, and when she looked up, she saw why. It was because he'd spotted Luke, less than five feet in front of them.

Luke awkwardly froze, and then looked up at Lorelai.

"Guess he's missed you," Lorelai said with a shrug, explaining Paul Anka's behavior.

Luke nodded and bent down to greet the dog, letting him sniff his hand then patted him on the head.

"Hey, Paul Anka," he said. "I know, it's been a long time since I've seen you, too." Paul Anka continued to bark, so Luke patted him on the back a few times until he calmed down.

"Didn't know he was so attached to you," Lorelai said.

"Yeah, me either," Luke agreed, standing up. They stood awkwardly for a few minutes, and then Luke gestured towards the bank. "I, uh, was going in there."

"Oh, right. Well go ahead, don't let us keep you."

Luke nodded, and turned towards the bank.

"What do you think of me?" Lorelai asked suddenly, and Luke turned around.

"What?" he asked with a frown.

"What do you think of me, now? I have to know."

"What do I think of you?" Luke seemed surprised and generally confused, by her question.

"Yes. Rory apparently has been holding in all these horrible feelings about what I did. To you. So if she's that angry, well… I can only imagine what you think of me."

"I really don't…" Luke sighed. "I don't want to have this conversation."

"Because you think I'm horrible, right? You think I'm a whore. You think I'm a witch, with a b. You think I could care less about people's hearts. You think I'm unstable and unable to commit. You think I'm childish and immature and insecure--"

"No," he said suddenly, forcefully. "I don't think any of that. But maybe you do."

"So what do you think of me, then, Luke? Come on, I've already had a bad day, I can take it. I want to know what you think of me now, after making one bad choice in two seconds. Tell me."

"You want to know what I think of you?" he repeated, his voice still forceful. "Okay. Here it is. I think you're amazing. I think you're beautiful. You're beautiful when you wake up, when you're all dressed up, when you're dressed for work, whenever. You're always beautiful. I think you're smart, because God knows the kind of mind it takes to be able to reference some stupid kids cartoon to current politics in the blink of an eye. I think you're funny, even though half the time I act like you're driving me crazy, which, don't get me wrong, you usually are. I think you're the strongest person I know, to have gotten yourself to where you are today in your life and with the inn and to have gotten Rory to where she is today, at Yale and on the road to amazing things, all by yourself. I think you're an amazing mother and that Rory is beyond lucky to have you, and so is Paul Anka even though he's only a dog and not a person, but you still love him in that same unconditional way. I think you're an amazing friend, you're always there when someone needs you. I think you're crazy, but it's part of your charm. I just think you're amazing. That's what I think of you."

Luke's mind was reeling. He hadn't intended for that rant to come out, at all. But one thing he could never stand was Lorelai thinking that she was anything less than she was, especially because everyone had always made her feel that way. And even though she'd hurt him, even though what she'd done should have made him see her in the way she was sure he did, it didn't. She was still the same, amazing, Lorelai she had always been.

Suddenly he recalled his conversation with Rory in the diner not that long ago, and he knew he was wrong. He could forgive her. He could, because she was Lorelai, and because it hadn't been all her fault. In fact, maybe he already had and he just hadn't realized it.

But at this point he was sure Lorelai was done with him. He'd been a huge jerk and had had just as much a part in destroying their relationship. He forgave her, but he doubted she was looking to forgive him anymore, especially after how he'd treated her when he found out about Christopher and when she had come looking for her glasses, as if everything was all her fault.

Lorelai started at him for a moment, taken aback. She blinked a few times, then looked down at the ground and focused on Paul Anka.

"You're the only person who's ever seen me like that," she realized quietly. "Who thinks that I'm amazing for who I am. I'm so sorry I screwed it up. You deserve so much better than me, anyway."

"Funny," he said softly, "because I never wanted better. All I've ever wanted was you."

With that, he turned and went into the bank, causing Paul Anka to give one last bark, apparently sad that he'd left.

"I know how you feel," Lorelai said to Paul Anka softly.

xxxxxx

Lorelai and Paul Anka walked around town aimlessly for a while after their encounter with Luke, until she got the vibe that Paul Anka was tired of walking and wanted to go home.

She dropped Paul Anka off, then decided to go and pick up dinner–rather than have it delivered to the house. That way she had something to do with herself to keep from thinking about all the people she loved that she had let down, all the people that were angry with her for a choice she was already angry with herself about.

When she got home, there was a message on the phone. Sighing, she hit play.

"Mom? It's me," Rory said. "I came by, but you weren't home. Look, I'm on the plane right now," Lorelai raised her eyebrows in shock. "I know, it seems fast, and I know you think I made this choice in two seconds, but Logan got a really good deal on these tickets, they were actually cheaper than if I waited to fly next week. And he is paying for most of the airfare, so I figure I should take the deal. And I didn't make this choice in two seconds, Mom, I've been playing with the idea since… before Logan even left. But I didn't think it would be able to happen, so I never said anything, which I probably should have so you would have had some idea. Anyway, I'm on the plane, and they're about to ban cell phone use, but I had to call really fast. I'm sorry for earlier, I didn't mean what I said… most of it. I was just frustrated, missing Logan, and… I've missed him so much lately, Mom, you know? And I didn't want to feel guilty about finally getting to see him because I was leaving you, which I guess I already kind of did anyway. So I snapped. I'm sorry. I was out of line. You don't deserve to be alone, you know that, right? You don't deserve that at all. Maybe it was partially because I had just seen Luke recently and he… I could see in him what I saw in me after Logan slept with those girls. I was just on edge. I'm sorry. I'll be back on August 17th, and school doesn't start until the 28th, so those are eleven whole days all for you. I don't have to move in anywhere or anything this year, so none of those eleven days will be wasted with anything relating to school. Eleven days is a lot. I promise we'll spend a lot of time together then, okay? Look, I have to go, but I'll call you when I get there, okay? Love you!"

Lorelai sighed. It wasn't about forgiving Rory. Of course she forgave her, and of course she understood why she was going to London. But it was about the selfish part of her that had come out earlier on the phone with Rory (something she never wanted to happen). She was alone. She had no one.

She remembered when summer used to be exciting. When she was a kid, it meant that she had time off of school. When Rory was in school, it meant she got to spend time with Rory, all the time. When Rory went away to college, it meant that Rory came home. Except, it never really worked out that way. After freshman year, she went to Europe with her mother, to get away from her. After sophomore year, she moved in with her grandparents, to get away from her. And now, after her junior year, she was going to London, not to get away from her, but to get to someone else. And after next year… who knew where Rory would be off to, after graduating from Yale.

Suddenly, she realized, she was in the middle of the rest of her life. Rory off doing something exciting, living her own life, making her life into what she wants it to be, while she's here, alone, except for Paul Anka.

A few months ago, the plan had been for Rory to be off doing exciting things, living her own life, while Lorelai was beginning a life with Luke, while Lorelai had Paul Anka and Luke and the family she and Luke were going to start. But not anymore. Rory still had the same exciting future, but all Lorelai had now was what she had right at this moment. No one.

But the thing was, Rory had it right. You grow up, you find someone to spend your life with, you try as hard as you can to make it work. She should be doing the same thing her daughter was, but she wasn't. She hadn't. And now, she was left with a lifetime of days much like this one.

The world wasn't standing still, waiting for her to figure out how to spend the rest of her life. Everyone else was going on with their lives, leaving her alone.

It wasn't really anything to look forward to at all.

xxxxxx

Mid August approached, and Lorelai was no longer going to be alone.

Emily and Richard were back.

She found herself somehow conned right into a Friday Night dinner the first Friday they were back, and she wasn't sure how. She had no obligation to them anymore. Christopher was paying for Yale, not them. Maybe a part of her hadn't tried to get out of it, hadn't resisted their manipulative words, because she was desperate to have company. The only person she saw these days was Sookie, and most of the time that was at the inn. On the rare occasions they did hang out outside of work, Sookie often had one, or two, kids with her which kept her distracted constantly.

But she knew that she was going to have to tell her parents about Luke. The engagement had been broken so long by now that it was almost old news to everyone, and she had stopped having to explain the story over and over. But her parents had been gone, and they still didn't know. She'd forgotten the exact words she'd used to explain why they'd broken up, by now. She had perfected it to an art, before. Using just the right words to keep people from asking questions and to keep her from coming off like the horrible witch in the story.

When she knocked on the door she was greeted by a maid for only a fraction of a second before Emily appeared, shooing the maid off and taking Lorelai's coat and purse herself.

"Lorelai!" she said. "It's wonderful to see you." She paused and looked around. "Is Rory coming separately? I would have thought she would be spending time at home with you."

Lorelai suddenly realized that they had no idea that Rory had gone off to London to visit Logan, either.

"Actually, Mom, she's not spending time at home with me--"

"So she's coming on her own, then?"

"No, actually, Mom, she's not coming at all."

Emily stared at Lorelai for a moment, then laughed. "You're very funny Lorelai. Sometimes you sound so serious."

"I'm not being funny, Mom. I'm not joking, I am serious. Rory's not going to be here tonight, she'd have a hell of a commute in front of her."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Rory's in London, Mom. Visiting Logan."

Emily pursed her lips and studied Lorelai's expression for a moment, before turning on her heels and heading into the other room, leaving Lorelai confused.

"Richard!" Emily called out as Lorelai followed her into the living room, where Richard had just appeared. "Richard, did you know Rory was going to London this summer?"

"Why no, I did not," Richard said with a frown. "But my, what an opportunity."

"She's visiting Logan," Emily told him, disapproval in her voice. "She went across the country to visit a boy."

"Mom…" Lorelai said with a sigh. Her mother could change her opinion on Logan in an instant, it seemed.

"Lorelai, I can't believe you and Rory never told us she was going to London," Richard said with a frown, taking a seat. "I would have liked to give her a little something for her trip."

"I didn't even know myself until about ten minutes before she got on the plane," Lorelai scoffed, and Emily picked up on her tone.

"She didn't ask you? She didn't tell you she was going across the country?" Emily grilled.

"Sure she did. The day she got on the plane."

"That doesn't seem like Rory," Richard noted.

"That doesn't seem like Rory at all," Emily agreed.

"Rory's twenty-one. She wanted to see her boyfriend, who happens to live in London now, so she made it happen."

"But still, why didn't she tell you sooner?" Emily pressed. "Is there something you're not telling us? Are you and Rory not speaking again?"

"God, Mom, no, stop being so dramatic. Rory and I are fine," Lorelai insisted, though they weren't actually completely 'fine.' They had been talking on the phone, and Rory and Lorelai had both apologized for the fight they had had the day Rory left, but something still hung in the air between them. But they were nowhere near as troubled as they had been last summer, which was essentially what her mother was asking. "She just went to go see Logan. I think she was just afraid to tell me."

Emily was nothing if not persistent. "Well why is that?"

"It's a long story," Lorelai said with a sigh, taking a seat on the couch.

"Well, Lorelai," Emily said, sitting down as well, "I should say I'm surprised that you showed up here, of your own free will, for dinner tonight knowing Rory wouldn't be here."

"Actually," Lorelai said, looking down at her dress and picking some lint off. "I need to tell you guys something."

Emily again picked up at the tone in Lorelai's voice, sensing that it was something bad. Her gaze immediately dropped to Lorelai's left hand, which was purposely covered by her right.

"Lorelai, let me see your left hand," Emily suddenly demanded.

"Mom…" Lorelai said softly.

"There's no ring on it, is there?" Emily asked. Lorelai shook her head sadly.

"No. There isn't," Lorelai answered.

"You and Luke broke off the engagement?" Richard piped in, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

"Unfortunately, yes," Lorelai admitted. Emily and Richard were silent for a moment as they processed the news.

"Well I certainly didn't see that one coming," Emily said suddenly. "I really thought you would marry him."

"Well, I really wanted to," Lorelai explained with a shrug.

"So what happened?" Emily wanted to know. "Did he break it off with you? Why on Earth would he do that? Does he think you're not good enough for him or something? Why I should--"

"Of course not, Mom," Lorelai interrupted. "Of course he doesn't think that, Luke's not like that."

"So what could have possibly possessed you two to end things?" Emily pressed on. "You were so close, so adamant about marrying him. You didn't even run when he found out he had a daughter. What could have broken the two of you up?"

"I don't want to get into it. It's a long and complex story…"

"I highly doubt that," Emily shot back. " I bet there's one simple answer."

"Can we just drop this, please, okay? It's been months, it's old news, I don't want to bring up all the old feelings again."

"Well, Lorelai," Emily said sincerely, apparently agreeing to stop pressing her, "I'm very sorry to hear the engagement's broken."

"Yes, me too," Richard piped in. "Luke was a fine young man."

Lorelai's jaw dropped. "You're sorry I'm not marrying Luke? You don't like Luke, remember? Remember the whole 'Let's try and break Luke and Lorelai up' fiasco of 2005?"

"That was a long time ago," Emily said with a sigh and a roll of her eyes, as if everyone should know her intentions toward Luke had changed. "You were happy with Luke. I could see that."

"And he is a fine young man, running that business of his the way he does and accepting responsibility for his daughter like he did," Richard added with a nod. "Doesn't play golf too well, but he's a fine man nonetheless."

"Yeah. He is," Lorelai said with a sigh. "So anyway, that's that. No more wedding."

"Oh, Richard!" Emily realized suddenly with a gasp. "The house."

"Ah, yes," Richard realized. "Well, we can always just put it back on the market. Or perhaps we could rent it."

"What house?" Lorelai asked curiously.

"The house for you and Luke," Richard explained. "The one your mother told you about."

"Oh," Lorelai breathed, recalling the house that she had almost forgotten about. "You… you bought it already?"

Emily nodded. "Well, we really thought you two would get married despite everything that's happened lately and we didn't want someone else to sweep it out from under our feet."

Lorelai nodded in understanding. "Oh. Well… thank you, I guess. I'm sorry you're stuck with it now."

"Nonsense," Richard said. "It shouldn't be any trouble. I would hesitate putting it back on the market so soon, though, buyers may think something's wrong with it. Houses that are sold and back on the market so fast don't seem appealing to many."

Emily piped up. "Oh, let's not worry about this now. Lorelai, would you like a drink?"

"Yes, please," Lorelai said with a sigh.

And they didn't bring up Luke for the rest of the night.

tbc…


	7. Four Stairs

A/N: Since BWR isn't validating right now, you see it here first! ;) Sorry for the length of this one… way long. But worth it, hopefully! ;)

Rory was due home from London the night of August 17th, and Lorelai had intended to pick her up, until she got a call saying Paris was picking her up because she was taking an earlier plane than originally planned and she knew that her mother had a meeting at the inn that morning.

Truth be told, she was somewhat nervous about seeing Rory. They had talked on the phone plenty while Rory was in London, and their fight from the day she left was long put behind them. But a part of her was nervous about seeing Rory in person after that fight. The things that had been said had made her look at things in a new light, and she wasn't surprised that Rory had snapped at her the way she had–she had known that what happened between her and Luke was similar to what Rory and Logan had gone through, but she hadn't thought about how that might make Rory identify with Luke more than she seemed to let on at first.

"Mom?" Rory called, opening the door to the house. "Mom, are you home? I see the Jeep outside."

Paul Anka scampered to Rory's side and Rory laughed. "Hey there buddy," she said, petting him.

"Rory?" Lorelai called. "Is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me!" Rory called back. "I'm back!"

Lorelai came down the stairs a second later. "Aww, there's my kid. Hey, you look older."

Rory laughed. "I was only gone five weeks, Mom."

"A lot can happen in five weeks. That's more than a third of a trimester of a pregnancy. Imagine how much a baby can grow in five weeks?"

Rory shook her head and gave her mother a hug. "I missed you!"

"I missed you, too," Lorelai said, "Even though I talked to you like every day."

Rory laughed. "Hey, Mom--"

"It's okay, Rory, forget it. We already talked about this."

"I know, but those things I said…" Rory sighed. "I just wanted to apologize in person. I am sorry."

"I know. And it's okay. I'm sorry, too, I had no right to want you to stay with me just because I was upset, let alone tell you that. I wasn't being a good mother, I was being a needy friend, and that wasn't fair. And hey, look, I survived just fine."

Rory laughed. "Good, glad to hear it."

"And Rory… I am sorry. About Luke. I didn't think that that might affect you, too, but it does, I get that. He's always been important to us, not just me, and lately I've kind of forgotten that, I've seen him as mine."

Rory waved her off. "It's okay. I was just being emotional and I'd just seen him a week or so before I snapped. I understand."

Lorelai nodded and was eager to move them away from this topic. "So, how was the goodbye with Logan?"

Rory sighed. "Hard. But he should be coming home… well, here… for Thanksgiving. So I'll see him then, hopefully, if all goes well."

"That's good. That's not too far off, just a few months."

"Yeah, that's true," Rory agreed. "Okay, so. I don't start school for eleven days. Any ideas on how to fill them? I bet we could cram a looot of movies in. I have some suggestions on which ones they should be, too."

Lorelai laughed. "I'm all ears."

xxxxxx

After their eleven days of special bonding time, Rory returned to her apartment in New Haven and threw herself into her classes, as usual, still determined to catch up from the missed semester, still determined to graduate on time in just about nine months.

Once Rory was back in school, Lorelai noticed how the days didn't seem quite the same as they had before when Rory was in school. The break up with Luke might have had something to do with that. Her kid was a senior in college, and she hadn't not been with Luke since Rory was a freshman. Even last year when things got complex between her and Luke, they still strived for a sense of normalcy at times, eating dinner together or hanging out together, even if it was strained at time. That was all gone, now, and it seemed strange. Having extra time with Luke when Rory was in school had become routine the past two years.

But what got her the most, she realized, was the missing friend. She missed being able to hang out at the diner and have someone to talk to and tease. She missed being able to pop in for a cup of coffee on a break from the inn and spend a few minutes confusing Luke with her newest philosophy of life. Because that… that had been a part of her life for as long as she could remember by this point. It seemed like that had always been a part of her regular routine, more so when Rory went off to college and she had extra time to kill. There seemed to be something missing from her daily routine, just as it had been missing all summer. She would wake up, go to work, come home… with no stops at the diner, no time spent with Luke, day after day.

For some reason it was just feeling more noticeable, more permanent, after Rory had officially gone back to school. Or maybe it was because it was starting to feel normal, not seeing Luke, which freaked her out and made her realize that this routine was becoming permanent. But time went on, and her routine continued on without Luke, and continued to become more and more normal.

It was a busy Wednesday at the diner when the phone rang, interrupting Luke's flow of grabbing orders, delivering them to tables and collecting checks.

"Luke's!" Luke answered quickly, his attention still focused on the order he was looking for.

"Hello, I'm looking for a Luke Danes?" a voice, so formal it made Luke take notice, replied.

"I'm Luke Danes."

"Oh, Mr. Danes," the woman began. "I'm Rhonda from Hartford Memorial Hospital, and we've just admitted a Lorelai Gilmore--"

"Lorelai?" he asked, suddenly completely focused on the phone conversation, his voice full of concern. "Why? What happened?"

"…for acute appendicitis." The nurse finished. "She's fine, but she's in surgery right now."

"Well if she's in surgery she's not fine, is she?" Luke protested with a grumble.

"We admitted her to surgery right away," the nurse went on. "She was alone so we didn't have a chance to get any information from her before she went into surgery, except for the fact that she had been here July of 2005 for stitches, so we pulled up her file and you're her emergency contact." Leave it to Lorelai to go to the hospital without anyone he thought with a sigh.

"Right," Luke said, recalling her visit to the ER last summer after a stint in trying to help Sookie cook. "Last July. Of course." He rolled his eyes a bit, remembering that.

"So if you'd like to come down…" the nurse said. "And also, if you could check over her records and tell us if any information is outdated."

"Like the emergency contact?" Luke grumbled.

"I'm sorry?"

"Nothing, no, sorry," Luke said quickly. "I'll be right there."

xxxxxx

"How is she?" were the first words out of Luke's mouth when he arrived at the hospital.

"I'm sorry, you are?"

"Luke Danes," Luke said. "Someone called me about Lorelai Gilmore. I'm her emergency contact?"

"Oh, right, of course!" the nurse replied. "I was the one who spoke to you on the phone," she added.

"Oh, great, right," Luke said, reaching out to shake her hand. "Is Lorelai okay?"

"She's fine. She just came out of surgery a little while ago. Everything went well."

"Great, good, okay, so… she's okay?"

"She's fine. This is a very common procedure. She should be able to go home in about two days."

"Wow, okay, that's good," Luke said with a nod.

"She's in room 119 if you want to see her, which I'm sure you do," the nurse said, pointing Luke in the general direction of the room. "She should already be awake, but if she's not she should be awake soon."

Luke nodded. "Thanks." He turned in the direction the nurse had pointed him in before turning back to face her. "Uh, do I have to see her?"

The nurse looked confused. "What?" she asked with a frown.

It wasn't until he said it out loud that Luke realized how stupid the thought was. That wasn't him. That wasn't him and Lorelai. "No, sorry, never mind," he told the nurse. "119?"

"119," she confirmed.

He made his way to room 119 and stood outside of it for a good five minutes, unsure of how to proceed. Would Lorelai even want him there? Would she freak out? What was he supposed to say to her? They hadn't had many wonderful encounters in the past few months. With the exception of June 3rd and the conversation about the Father's Day tickets, he hadn't even seen her much, and usually when he did it involved arguing or awkwardness.

But he kept coming back to the feeling he'd felt when he'd heard she was in the hospital. He kept coming back to the feeling he was feeling now, just wanting to see for himself that she was, in fact, okay.

He opened the door slowly, giving a slight knock before stepping inside the room, in case she was awake.

She was.

"Lorelai?" he said softly, stepping inside.

She looked in his direction and blinked a few times, as if she thought she was seeing things. "Luke?"

"Yeah. Hey."

"Hi," she said softly, the surprise evident from her tone.

"Seems like you've had quite a day, huh?" Luke teased.

"Ugh," she moaned, leaning her head back against the pillow. "Seriously." She was quiet for a moment before asking, "What are you doing here?"

"They called me," he said, taking a seat next to her bed. "I guess they were too busy rushing you in to surgery to get information from you except that you'd been here before, so they looked up your most recent forms and I was your emergency contact."

"Oh right," she said. "Last year, when I had to get the stitches on my finger."

"Thanks to Sookie."

Lorelai laughed a little, "I told you, it wasn't entirely her fault."

"Sookie's on a first name basis with everyone in every hospital, the woman is a walking disaster."

"Still, I wanted to help."

"She shouldn't have let you use that food processor."

"I wanted to!"

"We've had this conversation before, and it always ends the same way, so maybe we should just give it up now," Luke realized.

"Maybe," Lorelai chuckled.

"Why did you come here yourself?" Luke asked. "Weren't you at work? You couldn't have said to someone 'Hey, I think I might have appendicitis'?"

"First of all, I didn't realize that's what it was, and second of all, no, I was at home. I thought maybe it was just a really bad stomach flu, food poisoning or something, so I came here. It got really bad on the way, and as soon as I got here they knew what it was and said I needed to go into surgery as soon as possible."

"Oh," he said. "Still, you should have told someone you were going to the hospital."

"So why did you come?" she asked, changing the subject back to Luke.

"I told you, they called me."

"I know, but why did you still come? Why didn't you just call Rory or Sookie and let them deal with me? Why didn't you just ignore the call and leave me to fend for myself?"

"Well, because for one, I'd never do that to anyone, let alone you, and two, I was worried about you, I wanted to see for myself that you were okay."

"How do you do it, Luke?" she asked softly.

"Do what?"

"How do you still worry about me and care about me even after I've hurt you so much?"

"It's not really in my control," he explained with a sigh. "I just feel what I feel. And when I got a call saying you were in the hospital, let me tell you, I didn't feel so good. And besides, you don't think I know that I've hurt you just as much?"

She opened her mouth to say something when the door swung open and a doctor came in.

"Ms. Gilmore," he said. "You're looking good."

Lorelai nodded. "Yeah, sure, but I've definitely felt better."

The doctor chuckled. "Well, according to the labs and my chart here, you're doing very well. I'm thinking you'll be okay to go home in a day or two. Do you have stairs at your house?"

"Stairs?" she frowned, confused by his sudden question. "Uh, yes."

"Any need to go up them?"

"Well, the bathroom is up there," Lorelai realized. "And the bedroom."

"Sometimes going up stairs too often after an appendectomy can cause damage to the wound. But as long as you have someone with you for the first few days to help you out, you should be fine to go home in a day or so."

"Oh," Lorelai said, feeling the awkwardness of the situation fall upon the room, especially with Luke sitting there. "Well then maybe I should stay here longer because I don't really have anyone to--"

"I'll be with her," Luke told the doctor, interrupting Lorelai, and she looked at him in surprise.

"You will be?" she asked, confused. "Really?"

"Yes, of course." He said this as if it was last July, and they were still the couple they had been a year ago, as if the past few months had never happened.

"Okay, that's wonderful then," the doctor said. "Just to make sure she doesn't have to climb the stairs too often and make sure no fevers develop or anything like that. But we'll discuss this more in a day or so. For now, Linda should be in to check your blood pressure in a few minutes."

Lorelai nodded and smiled at the doctor before he left the room, then she turned back to Luke.

"You don't have to do this," she insisted seriously. "You don't have to take care of me. I'm sure Rory would be willing to help."

"Rory has school."

"But--"

"But nothing. Rory has school and I have nothing I can't get out of."

"Why are you doing this?" she asked, still confused. "Why are you taking care of me? Why are you here?"

"Why do you think?"

"I don't know!" she said. "I hurt you, Luke, remember? I hurt you, and now you're taking care of me? It doesn't make any sense."

He took a hand and gently tilted her chin up to look at him. "Yes. You hurt me," he agreed. "But I also hurt you. Lately I've come to realize how much."

"But--"

"And beyond everything, you're my friend. Remember how we put everything aside on June 3rd and were just friends again?" she nodded. "That's what this is now. I would never leave my friend alone in the hospital."

She nodded. "I'd love to keep pressing you on this, but I really don't feel so hot."

He chuckled. "Sleep. Rest. I'm going to call Rory again, I left her a message a little while ago, but I think she was in class."

Lorelai nodded. "Most likely."

"So rest, and I'll be right back, and I'm sure Rory will be here soon."

"Luke?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

He smiled at her in answer. "Anytime."

"Oh, and Luke?"

He turned to face her again. "Yeah?"

"Is there any way you could check on Paul Anka and feed him for me?" she asked, shyly, as if she was embarrassed to have to depend on him.

"Already on my to do list," he notified her, and she smiled and nodded knowingly before placing her head on the pillow again and closing her eyes.

xxxxxx

"When they said no stairs, I think they meant a lot of stairs, all the time," Lorelai protested as Luke refused to let her walk up her few front steps.

"They didn't say that," he countered. "They said to avoid stairs as much as possible. If you can avoid these stairs, why wouldn't you?"

"Luke, come on, there's like four stairs, I can handle that."

"Fine," Luke grumbled, taking her keys from her and heading up the steps himself. "But take them slowly, okay?" he insisted, unlocking the door and leaving her to climb the stairs, slowly.

"See?" she said, when she passed him on the way into the house. "I made it."

"How are you feeling?"

"I'm okay," she said with a sigh. "Kind of tired, though."

"You should rest," he agreed. "At least for today. We'll get you settled upstairs so you can get to the bathroom and you can be comfortable in bed, and then I'll bring the TV up and set it up so you'll be able to just hang out up there."

Lorelai nodded. "Sounds good. Are you going to let me climb the stairs by myself?"

"Are you going to let me not let you climb the stairs?" he shot back.

"Not really, no," she said. "Just let me go up them this one time, and after that, if I need to go up or down the stairs, I promise, you can help me."

"Fine. I'll start getting the TV unhooked from down here."

"See," she said, pointing an accusatory finger at him, "I told you, this is why I knew we should have gotten a TV for the bedroom…" she teased before realizing what she was saying. "I mean... crap. Sorry."

Luke managed to force a smile. "It's okay. And it's no big deal, I'll just unplug a few wires and then plug them back in upstairs and it's good to go."

Lorelai nodded and Luke noticed her hurry up the stairs, eager to get away from the awkward situation that she had inadvertently created. Had he not known that was her reasoning, he would have told her to take the stairs slower, but he decided he could let this one pass.

He took longer than he needed unhooking the TV, simply to give her time upstairs to get over her choice of words from earlier.

He arrived upstairs with the TV and knocked on the door that was only partially open.

"Come in!" she called, and he entered with the TV, and he was momentarily struck by the bedroom. It was so familiar, yet it had been such a long time. This bedroom that they'd decorated together, for them was now only hers. He couldn't even remember the last night he had spent there, with her. It seemed like ages ago.

He spent a few minutes hooking the TV up, aware that Lorelai was perched on the end of the bed, watching him in silence. When it was done, he stood up and turned to face her.

"All set."

She nodded. "Thank you, Luke," she said with so much sincerity it caught him off guard.

"Anytime."

"I really appreciate you doing this. Not just the TV, everything."

"It's no problem," he assured her. "It's the least I could do for you after… everything."

"It was towards the end of March," she said suddenly.

He was confused, as he often was when talking to Lorelai. "What was?"

"The last time you spent the night here," she said softly. "That's what you were thinking about, wasn't it?"

He nodded, surprised she had been able to read his thoughts so clearly. He really shouldn't have been surprised by that, though, he realized. She always had been able to do that. The past nearly five months hadn't changed that, though it seemed like they should have. "Yeah."

"That's when it was. I remember because I kept getting worried about the fact that you were here less and less, and I kept noticing how it kept getting longer and longer since you last spent the night here, with me." She spoke so sadly it broke his heart. "Then eventually I just made myself stop thinking about it and realized that's how things were now."

"Was it really that long ago?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Then April started coming around a lot more so you stayed at the diner, we were starting to fall apart so I guess you just naturally felt like you shouldn't be here, then you were on that trip with April, I was avoiding you, we broke up…"

"Right."

"You know what?" she asked him. "I still think of it as our bedroom, sometimes. And the weirdest part about that? There was only, like, four months where we actually used it like it was our bedroom. And it's been, like, six months of it being just mine without you staying here. But I still think of it as ours sometimes."

He nodded. "It was supposed to be ours," he guessed. "That's probably why."

She nodded in return and he could see the tears in her eyes. "Yeah, that's probably it."

"It was last October," he said suddenly.

"What was?" she asked, her turn to be confused by a sudden outburst that included a timeframe.

"My favorite memory of us," he said gently.

"Oh," she breathed softly, actually recalling the conversation from June 3rd, when she had told him to pick his favorite memory of them and think back to that. Apparently, he'd really thought of one.

"I came home from the diner and you had fallen asleep on the bed, which was also the couch at that time," he recalled.

"Right," she said with a laugh. "That was convenient."

"And I guess I scared you when I came in, because you jumped up and threw a pillow at me. You know, if you locked the doors you wouldn't be afraid that every noise you heard while sleeping was a person coming in to your house."

She rolled her eyes. "Get back on topic."

"So you yelled at me for scaring you, and I couldn't help but laugh because at that moment you were just so… you."

"I remember," she said with a smirk. "I said, 'I thought you were someone coming in to have your way with me,' and you said, 'Who said I'm not?'" she laughed at the memory, then looked down at her hands, wondering if that memory was inappropriate territory given the circumstances.

"Yeah," Luke admitted, looking down embarrassed. "And then…"

"You had your way with me," she supplied him with the words, giving him a smirk. "And then after that I wanted to take Paul Anka for a walk and you said you'd come with me, of course, because there are so many bad people lurking around Stars Hollow at dusk."

"You never know," Luke protested with a grumble. "But really… I just wanted to spend the time with you."

"Oh, I know that," she quickly stated. "You're not so hard to read, contrary to popular belief," she teased. "Then we walked around the square for like an hour and a half, just talking," Lorelai finished the memory.

"Yeah," he said quietly.

"I can't believe that's your favorite memory of us. It's so…commonplace."

"I guess," he agreed. "But it's just one of those days, one of those moments, that always sticks in your head and makes you smile when you think about it. Maybe because it is so commonplace, that's why it's special. Because it wasn't anything special, but it was just… nice."

"Yeah," she said softly. "It was nice."

"Besides," he said with a slight smile, "picking our first kiss is too predictable."

"Though that was a good one," Lorelai commented with a sentimental smile. "But you're right, I kind of like the October one."

"There are a lot of good memories from around then," he added, carefully sitting down on the bed next to her. "I mean, I know you were fighting with Rory so they're probably not the same kind of good for you, but I just remember us spending a lot of time together then. Really together."

"We did," she agreed with a nod. "I'd come home and find you here cooking for us, we'd eat together all the time, and you always stayed over even though our bedroom was in the middle of the living room. You went shopping with me and watched movies with me and our biggest problems were you going upstairs to check out the remodel while still in progress and me not knowing which color to paint the inside of the house."

"I swear you were way too obsessed with those color samples. It wasn't healthy."

"I picked a color!"

"At the very last minute."

They were silent for a moment, before Lorelai added, "I really, really miss that."

"Miss what?"

"You and me, like that. I never thought I'd long for the days that Rory wasn't talking to me but I miss the us that existed then. It was just so right. We were engaged and remodeling our house for our future. You were all domestic and cooking dinner and I'd come home to find you here all the time. You were practically living with me and we had matching soccer jerseys and I just… what happened to that?"

He looked down at the blanket and picked at a thread. "I don't know. Things got messed up." He looked up at her. "Really messed up," he corrected.

"Yeah," she said softly. "Really messed up."

"Because of April," Luke added as an explanation.

"No," Lorelai said forcefully. "Not because of April. Because of us."

Luke shrugged. "That too."

"I just tried so hard to pretend that things weren't falling apart, because that was my worst fear. I tried so hard to tell myself that as soon as you got things figured out with April you'd be back. You'd be that Luke again, we'd be us again, we'd go back to how we had been the first six months we were engaged, only there'd be a twelve year old-girl around sometimes, too, and Rory would be back."

"I don't know what happened," he admitted regretfully. "How did we end up like this? This wasn't supposed to happen. I just… I didn't realize how bad it was until you were gone."

She sighed. "I know. I was too caught up in trying to pretend that everything was okay and that it would be the same eventually that I didn't want to acknowledge that there really were problems. So I never said anything and things just kept getting worse and I kept denying it. I never said anything and you had no idea what I was feeling."

"I wish you would have just talked to me," he said softly, his fingers lightly brushing over her hand. "I would've tried harder, Lorelai. I would have tried to fix things if I had known how badly you were hurting. I really, I just… I didn't know. I should have noticed, I should have been able to read you better than that, but I didn't. Then after that night when you wanted to elope," he said, uncomfortably, "I realized. I realized how not okay you were and I was going to make things better, I was going to have us work this stuff out, but then…"

She nodded knowingly. "I know. Christopher."

"Yeah. Him."

Her eyes filled with tears suddenly as the familiar guilt rose inside her. "I'm so sorry for that, Luke. You have no idea. I hate myself for that."

"Don't hate yourself," he told her, looking her in the eyes. "And I know."

"You do?"

"After everything you went through, it was just… the icing on the cake, I guess. I don't blame you, when I think back to how I was treating you. It took me a long time to get here, Lorelai, but I know why it happened. I realized how badly I've screwed up. I was a jerk to you and I'm surprised you hung in there as long as you even did," he sighed sadly. "If I were you, I probably would've left me after I didn't tell you about April for two months. But God, you didn't. You were there and you were patient and you were so… supportive and generous, and I just didn't see that. I just kept acting like an ass."

"I never would have left you for not telling me about her," she assured him quickly. "I was upset you didn't tell me right away because I thought that's what we were, friends who told each other everything, at the very least. But I wasn't going to give up on us that easily, hell, I was trying everything not to give up on us, except actually talking. But from your point of view I saw how shocking it was for you and I get why it happened like that, why you didn't tell me right away. I wouldn't have known how to handle it either."

"Well that's how I feel about you and…" he sighed still feeling pain at having to say the words, "you and Christopher. I hate that it happened, but from your point of view I get it."

"Oh Luke," she sighed. "It shouldn't have happened. It wouldn't have, if I had been thinking straight. I was hysterical that night--"

"Believe me, I noticed."

"I was hysterical and I was looking for a friend, for comfort, and that was it at first. When I thought about going to Chris, I admit, part of the reason the choice was appealing was because I knew you'd be upset, and I was so mad at you. But I hadn't intended to hurt you this much, to hurt me this much, to hurt us this much. I just meant to go there and talk to Chris, as a friend. But then it turned out I was desperate for anything to get my mind off of you and how you wouldn't marry me, and I just--" she shut her eyes at the memory. "I just acted without thinking. I thought that Chris was all I deserved, because I couldn't make things work with you. I don't know what happened," she said as a tear escaped and slid down her cheek. "I never would have done anything like this to you, ever, broken up or not, if I had been myself. I know I wouldn't now, and I wouldn't have before, I know that wasn't me. But that one night I just… I lost it, I don't know. I wasn't me."

"We shouldn't be talking about this right now," he realized, even as his heart clenched at her sincere words of apology. "You should be resting."

She shook her head adamantly and wiped at her eyes as if making the tears go away would show him she wasn't getting upset. "No, I'm fine."

"You're getting all worked up," Luke protested. "That can't be good for you."

"Luke, I'm fine," she insisted. "I want to talk about this. For the first time in like a year I feel like things that need to be said are actually being said."

"Look, this is the bottom line," Luke began. "I was a jerk. I messed up our relationship, badly. You didn't call me on it, like you usually do. I didn't come after you when you walked away. You slept with Christopher."

"Sounds about right."

"I wasn't myself, and you weren't yourself. That wasn't you, Lorelai, to stand back and let me hurt you like that."

She nodded. "I know, it wasn't. And it wasn't you to shut me out of your life and be oblivious to how I was feeling," she pointed out.

"I know," he agreed. "It wasn't. It's just… well who thought finding out you were a father could cause so much turmoil, huh?" he managed to joke, and she laughed a little, looking him in the eyes for a second. "But we're just going to have to accept all this stuff and move on," he explained. "Not forget that it happened, not make excuses about why it happened, just deal with it, fix it, and move on if we want to try and work this out."

Lorelai felt her heart leap and her stomach churn anxiously. "If we want to work this out?" she repeated his words, her voice hopeful despite the fact she was clearly trying to act casual in case she was misreading the meaning behind his words.

"Well, do you?" he asked, sincerely wondering.

"Yes!" she exclaimed suddenly. "Yes. God, Luke, of course yes."

Luke took a deep breath and looked her in the eyes. "You slept with someone else."

"Wow, getting right into it, I guess."

"You slept with someone else, with Christopher of all people, and God help me, Lorelai, I still love you. I always will. I can't stop loving you, that's just not going to happen. So I have two options here. Be in love with you forever and be miserable because I'm not with you…"

"Or?" she asked, hopefully.

"Or I just get over all this crap… we get over all this crap, because I know you have stuff to get over, too… and be in love with you forever and actually be with you."

She bit her lip, unsure of what to say to him at this moment. "If it's any help, I like the second option," she said quietly.

He stared at her for a moment then let out a little laugh, reaching up to brush a strand of her hair behind her ear as he realized that she did, in fact, still want to make this work, as well. "Yeah, I kind of like that one too."

"Luke, I swear, things will be different. We can fix everything that went wrong. We can start over or pick up where we left off, but either way we can make this work, I know we can. It can be like it was before, when it was good, but forever."

"Third time is the charm, right?" he joked.

"That is what they say, yes," she grinned, her eyes sparkling for the first time in a long time.

"It won't be good forever," he told her seriously. "You know that's not true. It's going to suck sometimes, we're going to fight sometimes, and it's not always going to be fun, we're going to have problems. But it's all in how we deal with them. Shutting you out isn't how I should deal with problems in our life. I know that now."

"And dealing with them doesn't involve irrational ultimatums and walking away, I got that too."

He laughed, and then turned serious. "Lorelai…"

"What?" she asked softly, noticing his serious expression. When he didn't continue, she prompted, "Luke."

"I can't lose you again," he admitted, staring at the bedspread. "Once was hard. Twice was unbearable. Again, and I just… I won't be able to handle it."

"You won't have to. It's not going to happen again, I wouldn't be able to handle it again, either."

"We said the same thing last time," he reminded her sadly. "After we broke up before, when we got back together we said it wouldn't happen again. But it did."

"I know," she said with a sad, knowing sigh. "But there are no guarantees in life, you know? We can promise each other all we want that this won't happen again, but things happen. When we promised last time, and we meant it then, too. But things happened. I don't think we saw you being a father to a twelve year-old daughter as something that would come our way, but it did. So who knows what's out there waiting for us that we can't even imagine right now. There could be a lot of crap coming our way, or it could be a free ride from here on out where we only argue about taking out the trash and doing the dishes until we're eighty. I don't know. You don't know. No one does, except for maybe someone you find on the other end of one of those 900 numbers. We just have to suck it up and decide if it's worth it to take the chance that maybe we might lose each other again one day, somehow. But if we're so scared of that that we decide not to try again, what good does that do? Not trying again at all ends it right here. And I really firmly believe that we've learned a lot from all this stuff we've gone through, enough to keep us fighting for our relationship next time we need to. Together, we can get through anything. Together. But it all falls apart when we separate."

There was a long pause before Luke admitted, "I'm scared."

"Of what?" she asked, taking his hand and giving it a squeeze.

"Losing you again. Not being able to make this work. Being a jerk again and not realizing it. Of hurting you again."

"Aw, Hon," she said, which caused him to look up at her, surprised by the casual use of the term of endearment. "I'm scared of that, too," she admitted softly.

"Of me being a jerk again? I don't blame you."

She laughed and rubbed his arm gently. "No, although I'd rather not have to deal with that again, at least not for the length of time it went on last time," she admitted. "But I'm scared of messing up again, too. I never thought I'd be the kind of person who would stand back and watch her relationship fall apart, when it meant so much to her, and not do anything to stop it and then walk away. But I was that person, and I worry that somehow I could become that person again."

There was a long silence that Luke finally decided to break. "So… where does that leave us?"

"I guess with the same two choices we've had all along," she realized.

"Together or apart?" he guessed.

She nodded. "Yeah. Those are the ones. Together or apart."

"I don't want to choose apart," he admitted confidently.

She smiled in relief. "Good, because neither do I. Actually, apart isn't even an option for me."

"I really just can't function right with apart," he agreed.

"Me either. And I used to never want to be that person."

"What person?"

"The one that couldn't function on her own, the one that needs a guy to complete her. But I am." Luke started to say something and she cut in. "It's not a bad thing. It's like, if someone said to you, 'Hey, I see you have an arm attached to your body. Do you want me to cut it off so you can live apart from it? Or do you want to stay together with it?' Who the hell would choose apart? I mean, sure, if the arm has a disease or something, get rid of it. But the arm is perfectly healthy. The arm's been with you a long time. And you could function without it, if you had to. But it would be much easier, and you'd be much happier, to just keep you and the arm together. Even if living without an arm would prove that you're really independent. Who cares, you like the arm, the arm makes life better, easier; right."

Luke frowned at her. "Are you saying I'm an arm?"

She laughed at his confusion. "I'm saying, I would never choose apart from you because it makes no sense, like being apart from a perfectly healthy working arm makes no sense. Arms are necessary."

"So I am an arm."

"No, Luke," she sighed, a smile playing on her lips. "You're a part of me. I can't be Lorelai without Luke, not completely. That's just how it is. I used to dread the day I'd say that because I wanted to be Lorelai, without anyone's help. I just wanted to be Lorelai, all alone, doing whatever I wanted to do, however I wanted to do it. That's the way I raised Rory, and myself for that matter. But now, I can't be Lorelai without Luke. And it's okay. Because being alone sucks. Because you're not holding me back. You're not a burden. You make me better, and I know that sounds incredibly cheesy, but it's so true. You make me a better person, and you fill in gaps that I could never fill in on my own."

"So what you're saying is," he said with a smirk. "That you don't want to choose apart?"

"Yes," she said. "That's what I'm saying."

"Did we really have to bring arms into the conversation to get to that point?"

She laughed at him, and before she knew what she was doing, she leaned in towards him and pulled him towards her. Before he had a chance to question the action, he was leaning in voluntarily and their lips met in an instant. She kissed him softly at first, as if she was afraid she had been too presumptuous in kissing him, but when she felt him respond immediately she began kissing him more forcefully, immediately eager to make up for all the kisses they had missed in the past five months. It wasn't long before she felt his tongue tracing her bottom lip, and she opened her mouth immediately, thankful that he wasn't holding back, that he didn't seem to have reservations. She giggled slightly as he slid his tongue into her mouth, as his arms slid down her sides and to her back. They spent long moments rediscovering each other's mouths before the need for air forced them to break away.

She looked up at him with a smile, and he smiled the same giddy, nervous, hopeful smile right back.

"I love you," he said softly. "I love you so much it's ridiculous."

She giggled. "No it's not," she protested. "There's no such thing as loving me too much it's ridiculous." She leaned in to kiss him again, softly and lovingly. "I love you too, Luke, you have no idea how much."

"We have a lot of stuff to work out," he told her softly, leaning his forehead against hers.

"I know," she agreed.

"We talked about a lot of it, but there's still… we still have to work through it all. Deal with it. Make everything work."

"Yes," she agreed. "And I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make everything work."

"We will," he assured her. "We will make it work, we have to."

She nodded. "Because apart is not a choice. I need my arm."

He rolled his eyes. "Can you forgive me?" he asked suddenly. "For the guy I was the past few months? I wouldn't blame you if you couldn't."

"Oh Luke," she said softly, playing with the curls that escaped from underneath his hat. "Of course I can. I already have. I… I would have forgiven you in an instant, at anytime. I was ready to forgive you for all of it if you would've agreed to elope. I know that it was only a result of being stuck in the middle of a tricky situation and I just… I just want it to end. It was never about not forgiving you, because I knew why it was happening. I just didn't like it." He nodded. "I just… I don't know how you could ever forgive me for…" she trailed off.

"If someone would have come to me two years ago and laid out this situation for me and asked me if I would forgive you for it, I probably would have thought no. Well, first I would have thought it would never happen, then I would have thought no. But when it really happens it's different. It's so complex. And everything that led to it, Lorelai… I made you into that person. I made you into that hysterical, distraught person who wasn't even herself."

She shook her head, remembering the night and what she had done. "I'm so sorry Luke."

"I know," he said gently, sincerely. "I need you to promise me something, though."

"Anything."

"I don't want you apologizing all the time anymore," he explained. "For Christopher. I know you're sorry, and I'm forgiving you. I don't want you to think that you owe me anything, or that I'm always holding something against you, that we're not even, or equal. Okay?"

She blinked at him, surprised. "Seriously?"

"I'm serious. When I said we had to move past it, I meant it."

"Okay," she agreed, warily. "But before that starts, I really need you to know that I am sorry. It didn't mean anything, and I'm so sorry. I realized, the past few months, what it must have said to you, but whatever you think about Chris and me it's not true." She paused, trying to figure out the way to explain this to him that would mak him understand. "I never loved him, Luke," she interjected suddenly. "That's what you need to understand. I thought I did at one time, when I was sixteen. I thought maybe I could one day, if things could work out between us somehow, just like how you think you could love anyone you've just started dating, one day down the road. But I never loved him."

"Never?" Luke asked, skeptically, raising an eyebrow.

"No. I know it seems like I did. I know that you've seen me cry when I lost my chance to be with him, but God, Luke… if only you had seen me when I thought I lost my chance to be with you. Then you'd see that Christopher has nothing on you. I meant it when I said it to that psychiatrist that night, and I mean it when I say it to you… I've never really loved anyone until you, Luke. That's a fact. You have to believe me on that."

"I believe you," he said softly, lightly stroking her hand, bringing his gaze up to look her in the eyes.

"Good," she replied just as softly, tears springing to her eyes. "I need you to. I just need you to know that I love you. What I've always said before, it's true, even if my stupid mistake seemed to say otherwise to you, it's still true. He's just my friend, I love you. You just have to know that."

"I do," he said. "Lorelai, what you did with him… it made me doubt you," he admitted. "It made me think that maybe you didn't really want me, that maybe you really did always want to try things with Christopher and I was just your second choice, the one that was safe, the one that happened to work." He saw Lorelai's eyes widen at this, and he gestured for her to let him finish. "It made me not trust you, because I'd always trusted you with anything, Christopher included, and you turned around and slept with him after all."

"Luke…" she began sadly.

"But everyone screws up sometimes, believe me, I get that. Look at how I acted the past year." He saw her smile slightly at that. "You were upset that night and you made a mistake, I get it. After my thousands of little mistakes… I guess you were allowed one big one. And so it just happened to be with Christopher…" he said with a sigh. "I'm going to take a leap of faith here, Lorelai," he said. "I'm going to trust you. Because I do trust you. I know in my gut that I can trust you despite the fact that you screwed up like that. I'm going to trust that what happened with him meant nothing and I…I know you're sorry, and that to me says that I can trust you. And that something like this was a one time deal that will never happen again."

"It never will," she assured him. "Never. That's one thing I can be sure of."

He nodded. "I know. And I mean it, don't think you have to apologize forever."

"Just so you know I'd gladly spend the rest of our lives telling you how sorry I am."

"I know you would, and that's why I don't need to hear it. And I don't want our lives to be like that."

"God I love you," she said, kissing him again quickly. "I've missed you so much," she said, kissing him again. "Missed you." She kissed him again. "Love you."

"I've missed you, too," he agreed, grinning when she pulled away from him. "It's been unbearable."

"Tell me about it. You realize that since we've known each other this is the longest we've ever gone without being a consistent part of each other's lives?"

"I did notice that," he agreed. "You weren't around all the time and it was really weird. We had the break up before, and we had that one summer, but never this long."

"It just wasn't right."

"It wasn't right at all," Luke agreed. "Things were quiet. The diner was peaceful. It was strange."

She elbowed him playfully. "Hey now."

He chuckled and looked at her lovingly. "You need to rest," he said, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

"Aw, way to kill the moment, Luke. Are we really back to that?"

"You do need to rest," he said seriously. "You just had an operation."

"That little thing? It's a very common operation."

"Rest, please," he said with a sigh, giving her hand a final squeeze and kissing her on the forehead before standing up and pulling the covers back on the bed. She smiled at him appreciatively, and he marveled and how suddenly, she was Lorelai, his Lorelai, again. She wasn't his old friend, ex fiancée that he had to awkwardly tiptoe around in order to help or be around in any capacity. She was just Lorelai again. Everything felt comfortable, and right, despite everything they had gone through. Just like that, they were them again.

"Fine," she pouted. "Let me just go change." She paused awkwardly, trying to figure the situation out. She then grabbed some pajamas off the end of the bed and went into the bathroom. "This seems stupid, coming in here to change when you've seen me naked a thousand times."

Yes, she was definitely his Lorelai again.

He ignored her. "I'm going to go get the DVD player for you," he called to her. "And I'll bring up some DVDs for you."

"Aww, thank you," she cooed from the bathroom. "Will you stay and watch something with me?" she asked, carefully, unsure if that was an okay thing to ask him at this point in time.

He paused, considering his answer for a moment. "Only if you really rest and don't try and talk anymore about… everything," he called back. "There's time to talk more later, and I want you to rest."

"Fine," she agreed. "Ooh. Know which movie I really want to watch?"

Luke paused for a moment, and realized that she wasn't going to supply the answer. "Forrest Gump," he stated more than questioned.

"Amazing," she said, appearing at the doorway to the bathroom in pajama pants and a t-shirt, looking surprised. "You know me all too well."

"Believe me," he said seriously, "I know." He knew her well enough to know she always seemed to have a desire to watch Forrest Gump after she had any kind of pain inflicted on her. He gave her a wink before heading down the stairs to get the DVD player.

Neither of them had any idea how a sudden nearly ruptured appendix had led to this. After all their encounters in the past few months, a few had been friendly, just as this one had started out, but they had always ended the same way, with nothing changed between them. Maybe by this time, they had both come to a place where they understood and were able to forgive. Where they had stopped yelling and stopped defending themselves and looked at it from the other's point of view.

It seemed strange that a nearly ruptured appendix was all it took to lead them here after all it had taken to break them apart. But maybe that was a testament to how strong they really were. It took everything to break them apart and the simplest thing to bring them back together again.

tbc…


	8. Four Cokes

The first few days after Luke and Lorelai's agreement to work things out, he'd insisted that she rest, while she insisted that she was fine. But she knew the doctor had told her to take it easy for a few days, so she acquiesced even though she was eager to get things back on track with Luke, something she had really thought would never happen.

He called her often to see how she was doing, and she could hear the tenderness in his voice during the phone calls, something that she had missed in the past few months. He would call every day and ask what she wanted for lunch and he'd bring her order over to her himself no more than a half hour later. He came by to see her after he got off from work unless, of course, Rory was there visiting after her classes, then he insisted that they be alone. But really he wasn't quite sure he was ready to see Rory and talk to her about his relationship with Lorelai when they hadn't quite figured it out, exactly, for themselves yet other than it still existed.

Finally, one day instead of giving Luke her order for lunch over the phone, Lorelai decided to go to the diner for lunch instead. It had been almost a week since her operation and she felt fine and the doctor had said she was fine to resume normal activity.

She expected some heads to turn when she walked into the diner, of course. After all, she doubted that Luke had gone around town announcing the status of their relationship, so she doubted that anyone knew what was going on with them. But the one head she wasn't expecting to see turn towards her and smile as she walked in the door, was April Nardini's.

"Lorelai! Hi!" April grinned, excited, before Lorelai even had a chance to figure out if she should turn and leave or not.

"Hi April," Lorelai said carefully, smiling at the girl and taking a seat next to her.

"How have you been?" April asked, intently focused on Lorelai. "I haven't seen you in a long time. I guess since… my party."

"Yeah, about then," Lorelai agreed, knowing that that was really the last time she'd even seen Luke before it all went wrong.

"I guess I didn't really see you much before then, either, though," April mused.

"Yeah," Lorelai agreed again. "That's true, I guess not." A sudden thought occurred to her. "April, you know that I would have loved to get to know you, it was just that…"

"I know," April assured her quickly. "Dad explained it to me."

Lorelai raised her eyebrows at the use of 'dad,' but smiled at how natural it sounded coming from April– apparently it wasn't anything new to her. She'd missed out on a lot between Luke and April. Here they were coming up on knowing each other for a year, and she'd seldom had anything to do with it.

"Good," she said, wondering what exactly Luke had said to her and how it had come up. "Good, I'm glad."

Luke himself stepped out from the kitchen at that moment and smiled when he noticed Lorelai at the counter.

"Hey," he greeted her. "I didn't know you were going to come by today."

Reverting to her old behavior, Lorelai suddenly got nervous. "Well, it was just a spur of the moment thing," she said with a shrug, standing up from her stool. "Sorry. I didn't know April would be here."

"Oh, that's okay," Luke assured her as if his whole keep-Lorelai-and-April-apart game had never existed and this was the most normal thing in the world.

"It's okay?" Lorelai asked, catching his eyes knowingly. "Because… I can go if it's a bad time."

Suddenly realization dawned on Luke. "No," he said, looking her in the eyes confidently. "Stay. I mean, if you want to. I want you to."

"Okay," Lorelai said, settling back down on the stool next to April. "If you're sure I'm not interrupting you two."

"Stay, Lorelai. Please?" April piped up with begging eyes. "It's busy here this time of day and I'm always eating by myself. You could eat with me!"

Lorelai smiled, knowing that feeling all too well. Despite the fact that Luke's attention was on her eighty percent of the time when she was in the diner, when she arrived during rushes she often found herself eating alone.

"Okay," Lorelai agreed, flashing a smile to each April and Luke. "Good. It'll be nice for me to have someone to eat with, too. What're you having?"

"Cheeseburger and chili fries. The usual," April replied.

"Ah!" Lorelai exclaimed. "A girl after my own heart."

Luke watched the scene taking place in front of him and sighed. "I give up on you, all three of you– and by three, I'm including Rory, too. You're all lost causes."

April ignored him. "He didn't like me eating that stuff at first, but he's easy to wear down," April explained to Lorelai.

"Oh, believe me, I know it," Lorelai told April with a wink, causing her to giggle. "His girls just have him wrapped around their fingers."

Luke rolled his eyes and focused on Lorelai. "What do you want?"

"I think I'll go for a cheeseburger and chili fries, too," Lorelai decided. "April's got good taste."

"Lost cause," Luke muttered, ripping a page off his order pad and heading to the kitchen.

"We've compromised," April explained to Lorelai. "He lets me have the burger and chili fries if I drink a glass of milk with it. It only took drinking four cokes in a row one afternoon for him to flip out and rant about soda consumption."

Lorelai smiled at April's story, and at how classically Luke the behavior she was describing was. "I believe I've heard that same rant, only about caffeine consumption instead," she recalled, and April smiled. "So, how's school?"

"Eh, it's okay," April decided. "The science fair is coming up soon, though. Next year I'm going to high school, so it's my last chance to win this year. I don't know if they do science fairs in high school."

"I'm sure you'll come up with something good this year, then," Lorelai assured her. "Last year sounded pretty impressive," Lorelai added with a knowing smile.

"I thought it was," April agreed. "And it had really good results and all, you know, not just scientifically but… in my life, too. But I don't know. I'm not sure I can top last year. If that didn't win, what will?"

"You never know. It all depends on the competition, right?"

"That is true," April agreed. "I'll have to think about it some more." She sighed. "How are you feeling after your operation?"

"Oh," Lorelai said, surprised April knew about that. "I'm fine. I was a little sore for a few days, but I feel fine now. It is nice to have that appendix out, though. One less thing to worry about, you know?" she joked, and April laughed, but their conversation was interrupted when Luke appeared with their food.

"Here you go, girls. Enjoy." He patted April on the hand and gave Lorelai a smile and a wink, and she knew she was right; it was going to be different this time.

"Hey, April," Luke said suddenly, before going to a table to take an order. "I was thinking… would you be up for doing something with me, Lorelai and Rory sometime soon?"

"Sure!" April said, enthusiastically, and Luke wondered if she had been waiting for this almost as long as Lorelai had. "That would be fun. I liked Rory when I met her."

And Lorelai knew she was right about something else; it was going to be good this time.

Anna arrived at the diner to pick April up not long after Lorelai and April had finished their lunch, as April had apparently already spent the whole morning there and Anna was taking her shopping for supplies for her newest science experiment that afternoon.

Lorelai immediately cringed when she saw Anna come into the diner, afraid of how Anna would react to seeing her there, hanging out around April. But Anna simply smiled at Lorelai and said hello to her, then gathered April up. They both said goodbye to Luke, and were out the door in a flash, before Lorelai even had a chance to worry about making awkward conversation with Anna or being in the way of a conversation between Luke and Anna.

Luke went over and cleared the plate April had left behind and then began wiping the counter down. He looked up at Lorelai because she hadn't lifted her coffee cup for him to wipe under as she usually did when she occupied the counter for long periods of time and he had to clean around her, and he noticed she seemed to be lost in thought.

"What's the matter?" he asked her suddenly, and her head snapped up to look at him.

"Oh! Nothing, I just…" she shrugged, nervously. "I don't think Anna's going to be happy."

"About what?" Luke asked, stopping his wiping to concentrate on Lorelai.

"I never told you what Anna and I talked about when I went to see her," Lorelai said quickly. "I mean I told you I went to see her, before, but--"

"Lorelai--" Luke realized where this was going and tried to jump in.

Lorelai tried to rush on. "But I never explained what she told me--"

"I know," Luke interrupted her suddenly. "I know what she told you."

Lorelai frowned at him. "You do?"

"She told me. A few months ago I was talking to her when I dropped April off and somehow you came up in the conversation and she mentioned what she told you," Luke explained.

"Oh, she did," Lorelai said with an uncomfortable nod, unsure of how to proceed with this conversation or what Luke's thoughts on Anna's feelings were. What if he agreed, she wondered? No, if he agreed he wouldn't have let her stay at the diner today. But the diner was a public place…

"Yes. And it was completely unfair of her to tell you that," Luke said. " We talked. I could have been a little more levelheaded in how I handled it, I'm sure, but somehow I got her to see my side. Anna's good with this. I want you to be part of April's life and you're going to be part of April's life if I want you to be and if you want to be. And I do want you to be."

"Wow," she said, raising her eyebrows, surprised at the turn of events. "Well okay, then. I mean… I want to be, of course," she added quickly. "I'm glad you talked to her."

"I realized a lot while we were apart," he said. "I told you that before. But it's true. I realized mistakes I'd made, and talking to Anna about this whole situation and what it means for April to really be a part of my life was the first step in fixing one of them. And that includes you and April having a relationship, now that you're back. Which, believe me, was a hard battle to fight being that it looked like Anna was right about us since we were broken up. But she knows we're back together, I made sure to tell her when she called about April spending the morning here today, and she's okay with you spending time with April. As okay as she can be, I guess, anyway. She's adjusting."

"I'm impressed," Lorelai said with a raise of her eyebrows. "I mean, before… I kind of thought she had a point, with not wanting April to get attached to me, because…" she trailed off.

"You've always felt the same about Rory and the people you dated, I know. I get it."

She smiled at Luke. "Well, it's true. I never wanted her to get attached in case it didn't work out."

"Yes, but when you got engaged, you let her start getting attached, right? And when," Luke sighed, "…when Christopher was engaged, you let Rory get to know his fiancée, right? You weren't some woman I'd just started dating that could be out of my life in a day. You were my fiancée. And you and April deserve to get to know each other if you're going to be family. And Anna was wrong in trying to keep you and April apart, and… so was I," he admitted. "I did the same thing, first. But that's over now. I was wrong in how I handled it. I handled it badly, I hurt you, I confused April, I misled Anna, and mostly… I hurt you. I never meant to make you think you were anything less than you are to me. It was just me being an idiot. I'm sorry."

"I know you are," she said sincerely, reaching over and giving his hand a squeeze. "It's okay, it's all going to work out now. We're on the right track already. "

"I can't believe you can forgive me for being such an idiot," he said with a sigh, playing with the cloth he had been using to wipe down the counter.

"Seriously, Luke? After how many times I've been an idiot? Please. I owe you." He smiled thankfully at her attempt to make him feel better and at how forgiving she was. "Especially considering the most recent idiotic thing I did," she added softly.

"But I'm supposed to be there for you. That's what I do. When you need something, I give it to you. When you need help, I help you. I'm not supposed to let you down. I'm supposed to be the one you can always depend on. I ruined that."

"Oh, Luke," she said softly. "No you didn't. That's not true. You can't hold yourself to that high of a standard. I know I've called you the perfect man before, and you are. You always will be, to me. But I don't expect you to really be perfect all the time. Sometimes… sometimes it's about you and not me. Our lives are blended together now, Babe. It's okay for things to happen in your life that cause you to focus on yourself. I don't expect you to only exist to be there for me. I know sometimes it's going to be about you. I just… I'd like it if you would let me be the one who you can depend on when that happens. When I need you, you'll be there, I know that. But in return, when you need me I want to be able to be there. That's all you have to do, just let me in. I'll feel like I'm still apart of everything, if you're depending on me. It's all give and take. But you have to do both. Give and take. Trust me, I know it's hard to let someone in after years of only depending on yourself, but when you do it… it makes things much easier. I speak from experience."

"I know, and I do need you. I needed you to help me with April, I really did, but I was just… too stubborn and too insecure and too determined to do it the way I thought was best. But I did need you. That's why I handled things so badly, all around, I was trying to do it on my own and that wasn't working."

"Luke, Hon, you're talking to the queen of trying to do things on her own. I get it. We're good. I just want you to be let me in, I don't want you to think you can't tell me things or that I'm going to leave you because of something. Anything you come to me with, we'll work through it. Long lost daughters included. Though I hope there aren't anymore of those, since it might get kind of crowded around here."

He chuckled at that. "I think we're good on that front."

"Hey, you never know. Thankfully we can at least be sure that I don't have any long lost kids out there. I think I would know." Lorelai smiled and let the conversation return to something a little less serious, recognizing the diner was probably not the best venue for a serious discussion like this. "Maybe we should go out to dinner with Anna or something. She might feel better if she knows me," Lorelai offered. "And she seemed nice enough. I could probably not, you know, hate her for all eternity for keeping April from you if I tried hard enough."

"That would be nice," Luke agreed. "I think it would be good for… everyone. All five of us could go out to eat or something."

"Five?"

"Rory, too, of course," Luke said immediately, and Lorelai smiled and nodded.

"Oh, right. That would be good."

"Good."

"Hey, speaking of my kid, did I tell you what Rory and I discovered while you and I were apart? You're gonna love this."

"What?" Luke frowned.

"Pop tarts, in the freezer. And not just any pop tart. Hot fudge sundae pop tarts. Put those suckers in the freezer and Luke, I'm telling you… it might just be better than coffee."

"Hot fudge sundae pop-tarts?" Luke asked with a grimace, choosing to skip over the whole freezer nonsense for now. "They put chocolate in those things now?"

"Yes. Well, actually, the filling is more like a cream. But the pop tart itself is chocolate. Though I think that's just wrong. The fruit filling is what pop tarts were meant to have."

Luke raised his eyebrows at her. "Did you just say you prefer some variation of fruit over chocolate?"

"Fruit filling," Lorelai reminded him. "It's hardly anything healthy."

"But still, you like it better than chocolate."

"Well, no. The chocolate and cream fillings are better. You can't put the fruity ones in the freezer. That's just gross."

"But you just said those fillings are just wrong."

"They're more natural for a pop tart. But that doesn't mean they're better."

"If they're wrong, how are they better?"

"They taste better."

"But they're wrong."

"Yes."

Luke narrowed his eyes at her. "Do you have any idea how much I've missed you?"

Lorelai giggled. "It's good to be back."

xxxxxx

"Coming!" Lorelai called to the knock on her door. She put down the remote and hopped up, heading to the door and pulling it open to reveal Luke. She frowned.

"What am I ever going to have to do to convince you that you don't need to knock on the door?" she asked.

Luke shrugged. "It's just polite."

"You're my…" Lorelai trailed off, unsure. "You're my Luke, you don't need to be polite. Besides, being polite just means I have to get up to answer the door which is something I don't mind avoiding."

Luke rolled his eyes and leaned in to kiss her quickly. "Hey."

"Hi."

"So, you ready for dinner?" he asked. She nodded.

"Yeah, let me just go find my purse…" she said absentmindedly.

Luke sighed, wondering if this was going to be like all the times he waited for her to find her car keys or her socks or whatever item was missing and in the most ridiculous place. He sat on the edge of the couch as he waited for her, looking around at the living room. Sometimes, it still seemed so different to him, the living room post renovation. He knew that was a telltale sign that he hadn't been around enough, before. To Lorelai this house was familiar and normal by now. To him, it still seemed new and different sometimes. Not the big things, but the little things. Like he would expect to see carpet on the stairs instead of them bare and completely wooden.

Lorelai returned with her purse and a bright smile. "Okay, here it is." She watched him look at her. "What?"

"Nothing. You're just… beautiful."

She grinned. "Thank you. Do you like the dress? It's new."

"I noticed," he said with a smirk. "And I do."

"I thought you would," she gave him a wink. "I picked it out with you in mind."

"Well as long as I'm the only one you wear it for," he teased,

The words feel between them, each of them trying to gauge how the other was taking them.

"Is it always going to be like this?" she asked sadly.

"Like what?"

"Where I say something, or you say something, and we fall silent reflecting on the horrible past?"

"Lorelai. No," he said confidently, standing up from the couch and facing her, looking her right in the eyes. "We said we were going to work through this. That takes time. It doesn't just happen right away. We said we were going to work it out, but that doesn't mean everything is worked out, that everything is okay just like that. It's still new, and I shouldn't have said… I just wasn't thinking."

"I know," she assured him. "But… but you should be able to make comments like that without us thinking about… " she sighed. "You know. How do we…" she shifted her weight from foot to foot. "How do we actually work it out?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "It's just all still new. Once we move on and see that we're doing okay the past will be the past. It won't feel as new and as fresh and as hurtful and it won't be what comes to our minds right away."

"I just want it to go away," she sighed. "All of it."

"Well, it can't just go away," Luke sighed. "But it will have less of an appearance in our lives as time goes on. Trust me." He took her hands and gave them a squeeze. "Look. I love you. And we're us. We're going to be fine. We're stronger than this," he assured her. She stared at him for a moment and nodded, then turned away from him as she felt tears burning at her eyelids. "Lorelai?" he prompted her to talk.

"Nothing, no," she said, waving him off and falling down onto the couch. "It's just that… I hate myself. I really and truly do, I hate myself for what I did to you, to us, and I don't think I'm ever going to be able to forgive myself for doing it. I mean, you forgive me, but… how do I forgive myself?"

He sat down next to her and put a hand on her back, rubbing it gently to calm her down. "I don't know. That's something you have to figure out for yourself."

"I just feel like this is always going to be there, the big white elephant in the room. That whenever we make a remark like the one you made earlier, everything is going to come crashing down. I mean, how are we ever going to have sex again, Luke? How? How are you ever going to be able to look at me like that and not…" the tears had begun falling, "and not think of…"

"Lorelai, shh," he soothed her, planting a kiss on her head. "It's going to take time. That's all it is. This whole thing is still new, the pain of it's still fresh, it's still in the front of our minds. But we're going to pick up and move on and soon it's going to be just a part of the past."

She nodded and rubbed at her eyes. "I guess you're right. But I just feel so guilty, all the time, I feel like… I'm the person I never wanted to be."

"Hey, that's not--"

"I'm horrible," she suddenly sobbed, the tears falling freely. "I'm horrible and I'm the worst fiancée that ever was. It's going to go in the history books." Luke put his arm around her and pulled her close to him. "I just can't stop thinking about how I screwed up. You were the best thing that's ever happened to me and I did that to you. God, Luke, I just…" she continued sobbing into his chest, unable to keep speaking.

"Shh," he soothed her, knowing that there was nothing he could say that would make her feel better. "It's okay."

"And now you're still here, forgiving me, even after everything and… god I'm sorry," she muttered. "The reason I'm crying is because of how I hurt you and you have to sit here comforting me."

"I'm always here for you," he whispered into her hair. "You know that. No matter what."

She nodded into his chest. "I know. I just," she hiccupped a little, "just don't know what to do."

He held her for a few more minutes as she cried into his chest, rubbing circles on her back and pushing her hair away from her face.

"I love you," he finally told her softly. "It doesn't matter what you do, I'll always love you. Just know that." She nodded, but was unable to reply for fear she would start crying again, just when the tears were subsiding. "Hey, you want to just forget about dinner and stay here?" he asked her.

She looked up at him, her eyes puffy. "But I'm hungry."

"I'll make you something," he said.

"I don't have any food."

"Well I'll go get some, then."

"How about we order in?" she asked, sitting up a bit, but still keeping her body pressed close to Luke's. "I know you don't like much that can be delivered, but I just… I don't want you to get up, I want you here with me."

He nodded and pulled her close to him again. "Ordering in is good."

"Good," she said, sniffling a bit and closing her eyes, resting her head on Luke's shoulder. "I'm sorry for the breakdown."

"I think you needed it," Luke replied softly.

"I think I did, too," she said with a sigh.

He tilted her head up so she was looking him in the eyes. "I know what happened was hard, for both of us. What you did, and what I did, it goes both ways. We both messed up. But beyond everything, I love you. That's what it all comes down to. I love you and you love me and we're going to get past this because we want to so much. Step by step."

She nodded. "Right, step by step." She smirked a little. "Day by day."

"What are you doing this weekend?" he asked her. She shrugged.

"Nothing special. Why?"

"I was thinking maybe a good first step in all of this could be going out with Anna and April."

"Oh, right," Lorelai said, surprised. "Sure, that sounds good."

Luke smiled at her and kissed the top of her head. "See, step by step. Okay, now step two… what do you want to order?"

"Chinese?"

"Sounds good," Luke confirmed, reaching for the phone.

"I like this," she said with a sigh, settling down next to him again. "You being around here, picking up the phone and ordering food."

"I like it too," he agreed with a smile.

He was right, she decided. They'd hit rock bottom. The only place to go now, was up. They had hit the lowest low, and if they could recover from it... and they would... everything would be fine. They could tackle anything.

xxxxxx

"Mom?" Rory's voice called out when she entered her house Saturday night. "Are you here?"

"Upstairs, Hon!"

"Oh, okay. I'll wait down here."

"No, come up here," Lorelai called. "I need your opinion."

"On what?" Rory asked, as she made her way up the steps. When she reached her mother's room, she frowned at the mess of clothes strewn all around. "Oh. On your outfit, I presume."

"What do you think of this dress?" Lorelai asked, gesturing to the dark blue dress she had on. "Or should I go with pants. I should go with pants, huh? It's not a really formal dinner. What are you wearing?" Lorelai asked.

"Mom," Rory said with a laugh. "Look at me."

"Why?"

"Because then you can see what I'm wearing."

"Oh, right," Lorelai realized, letting her eyes flicker over her daughter. "A skirt and a sweater. That's good. But is it going to look like we're matching?"

"Because we're both wearing skirts? No, I don't think so."

"Ugh!" Lorelai said with a sigh, sitting on the bed. "This is the one situation that isn't covered in the 'What to Wear' handbook."

"Mom, relax," Rory said with a laugh. "You've met Anna before, you know."

"Yes, but that was different. This is an official meeting, where we're going to sit and talk. She's going to stare at me all night, and burn every little detail of what I'm wearing and how I look into her head to discuss with April when they get home, and to judge me on. God, I hate being the stepmother."

"Mom," Rory said with a laugh, pulling her up into a sitting position from the bed where she had thrown herself backwards. "They're not going to do that, okay?"

"Sure they are," Lorelai insisted. "That's what you and I would do."

"Well, not everyone is you and I."

"You can't honestly tell me that you don't think they're going to talk about me later."

"Well, sure," Rory decided, causing Lorelai to groan and fall back again. "But April likes you!" she added quickly. "And I think Anna will, too. So maybe they're not looking to trash you, okay? Besides, all your clothes are nice."

"Now you're just patronizing me." Lorelai sighed. "I need something that says, 'Hi, I'm Lorelai, I'm marrying, or, was supposed to be marrying, the father of your child, the man you have also been with and slept with before me. I will be a part of your daughter's life for the rest of my life, and in certain circumstances I may be responsible for her well being and be the cause of influence in her life. Also, I'm really not happy that you kept my fiancé away from his daughter for twelve years and don't think I'm going to forget that and if you ever hurt him again, there will be hell to pay. Also, I don't even know if I really am your child's future stepmother because my fiancé and I are kind of in limbo at the moment and I don't know what the hell is going on, and yes, that's right, there is no ring on my finger."

"Okay, that," Rory said pointedly, picking two sweaters out of Lorelai's closet and looking at them before hanging them back up, "is another discussion entirely."

"Right. So, what says that better? Pink or light pink?"

Rory stared at her mother in disbelief, and saw Lorelai frown when she realized Rory wasn't going to give her a serious answer. The door opened and closed downstairs, and Lorelai looked relieved.

"Thank God. Luke!" she called down the stairs. "Come up here, I need a second opinion, Rory's not taking me seriously."

Rory shook her head at her mother and headed out of the room just as Luke called back, "I'm sure there's a reason for that."

When they passed in the hallway, Rory just shrugged at Luke and gave him a smile that said 'good luck,' as she headed down the stairs.

"What on Earth is going on in here?" Luke asked when he stepped into the bedroom. "I didn't even know you had this many clothes."

"I don't know what to wear," she said with a sigh. "You know Anna is going to be sitting there, judging me, and the last thing I need her to be able to pick on is my outfit."

"Anna's already met you," Luke reasoned, similar to Rory.

"Jeez, sometimes I think Rory should belong to you and not me. So, what do you think?" she asked, holding up two skirts. "Black or white?"

"Black," he said simply.

"Just like that?" she asked. "Why black?"

He shrugged. "It's shorter."

"Luke!" she exclaimed, unable to hid her laugh and amusement as she threw a pillow at him. "All the more reason to not pick that one, then, we don't want her to think I'm a slut."

She noticed her choice of words immediately, and quickly glanced at Luke who seemed to pay no mind to them.

"What? I spent all those years waiting for you to pick the short skirt on your own, so now if I have the chance to suggest you wear it, why not take it?"

"Luke!" she rolled her eyes.

"No, I'm serious, black," he said, "I just like it better. And it's not that short, it's just shorter."

Step by step, she reminded herself. If Luke didn't think anything of the words, why should she?

"Okay, black it is," she agreed. "Now, pink or light pink?"

xxxxxx

"So I decided to open up the shop when April was four, because that way I could make my own schedule, have time to spend with her," Anna said at dinner that night.

Things had been going relatively well. April had greeted Lorelai with a big smile and given Luke a huge hug, and she and Rory sat next to each other, chatting away about science and Yale and all things scholarly.

Lorelai was convinced that Rory was being particularly quiet due to the fact she was embarrassed that Anna had immediately recognized her from her visit to her shop months ago. Rory had been sure there was no way Anna would remember a random customer, but apparently, she recalled Rory right away. Anna had laughed about it, but Rory had been much more quiet than usual after that.

Every so often Luke's hand would come to rest on Lorelai's knee and give it a reassuring squeeze as she carried on a conversation with Anna. And by the time the dinner plates were cleared, Lorelai was proud of herself for not saying anything stupid enough to stop the conversation and not spilling anything on herself or something else as embarrassing.

"Mom," April said as the desert was cleared and Lorelai and Anna had ordered coffee. "Since I don't drink coffee, can I go check out that bookstore next door that we saw on the way in?"

"Sure, I guess that's okay," Anna said, looking to Luke. Luke seemed surprised at her questioning glance, and he nodded his agreement.

"Cool, thanks. Rory, you want to come?"

"Oh, Honey, I think Rory might want coffee," Anna suggested.

"No, it's okay, actually," Rory said. "It's kind of late for coffee for me," she ignored Lorelai's glare. "And besides, I'd like to check out the store, too."

Rory and April took off and headed for the bookstore and Anna laughed. "April's in a good mood tonight," she informed Luke and Lorelai. "Seems Freddy asked her to the dance at her school."

"Freddy?" Luke groaned. "He's.. he's a boy."

Anna rolled her eyes playfully. "Yes, Luke. He is."

"Ohh, exciting," Lorelai jumped right in on a topic she knew about. "First date?"

"First date," Anna said with a nod. "Unfortunately… I haven't told her I'm not going to be able to be there to help her get ready which means she probably won't want to go after that." Anna sighed. "I feel horrible. But it's on a night we're doing this huge inventory at the store."

"Aw, bummer."

"So no date?" Luke pressed.

"I thought I'd see if maybe I could rearrange the inventory or something before I broke the news to her," Anna ignored Luke and continued talking to Lorelai, "but… it doesn't look like it's going to be possible."

"Well, she could always…" Lorelai looked to Luke and then to Anna, unsure. "I mean, stop me if I'm being too forward, please, but if that was me I'd be crushed to have to miss my first date, so I just thought… she could always come get ready at our place. I could help her." Anna was quiet for a moment and so Lorelai added, "but seriously, all you have to say is no and that's that."

"No, actually," Anna said, studying her coffee cup for a moment before meeting Lorelai's eyes. "That would be really nice. She'd like that. And I'd really love for her to be able to go."

"Oh, okay," Lorelai said, surprised. "Great, that would be great. I mean, if she wants to. Rory can come over and help, too. She seems to really click with Rory."

Anna nodded with a chuckle. "Who would've thought there were two of them?"

Lorelai laughed and watched as Luke stood up and excused himself to the restroom. She looked at him, pleading with her eyes for him to not leave her alone with Anna, but he gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "I'll be right back," he said, and Lorelai nodded.

"So, dinner was nice," Anna mused, making awkward conversation.

"Yes, it was. It was good. It was long overdue," Lorelai added with a knowing smile.

"Lorelai, listen," Anna said with a sigh. "Before, when you came to the store, I'm sorry if what I said impacted you and Luke in some way--"

"Oh, Anna, no. Luke and I were going through a rough time."

Anna nodded. "I think I may have overreacted regarding you and April," she added. "I was just taken by surprise, Luke had never even told me he was engaged, so naturally I just didn't realize that you were so… permanent in his life. He was right, though, if April is a part of his life and he's going to get married then… she deserves to get to know that person who's going to be apart of her life. So I'm trying. It's just hard for me, for so long it was just me and her, and so this is all a little nerve wracking."

Lorelai nodded. "Believe me, I get you. It was the same with me and Rory when she was growing up," she explained. "And when her father got engaged her future stepmother was all over her, following her every move. So trust me, I get it, and I'm going to try so hard not to be a Sherry. I'm not going to try and take over her life. I just want to know her."

"A Sherry?" Anna asked.

"Oh, that was her father's fiancée's name."

"Oh," Anna said with a chuckle. "Okay," she said with a smile. "You know, I never thought this would be Luke," she said, gesturing around the table. "He's like… the family guy. He's got you and Rory and a dog, from what I hear. I never pictured him like that." Lorelai nodded and took a sip from her coffee cup, as to keep back the 'obviously' comment that was on the tip of her tongue. "And he lights up when he talks about you, and Rory… he gets such a look of pride on his face when he talks about her. And he loves April, and she adores him. He's good at this."

"He is," Lorelai confirmed. "He always has been, with me and Rory. I mean, Luke and I have been friends for what seems like forever by now, and Rory's always adored him. She won him over when she walked into the diner when she was ten years-old with feathered angels wings on her back asking him to come to a caterpillar's funeral. The next time I saw him all he could do was go on and on about how sad she looked and how he'd given her a free brownie," Lorelai laughed at the memory. "And as for me, I honsetly don't know where I'd be if he hadn't been a part of my life."

Anna sighed. "I never even thought…" she shrugged. "Well, I guess you can tell by my choice to never tell him about April what I thought." Lorelai nodded. "And I'm sure you have an opinion on that. I know I sure would if I was you. And you're right, it was wrong, but I can't change it now."

Lorelai nodded. "Well, I sure know all about big mistakes, trust me." Anna laughed.

"Out of the two of us, Luke and I, I never would have expected he would be the one that would provide her with the stepmother and the stepsister and the dog and the whole family dynamic. But I'm glad she decided to find him."

"I am, too," Lorelai agreed. "He adores her."

"I know," Anna said with a smile.

Just then Luke returned to the table, smiling at Lorelai and looking between Anna and Lorelai.

"What? Talking about me?"

"Just how wonderful you are," Lorelai teased. He didn't need to know it was the truth.

Rory and April returned not much later, and when they got up from the table to leave the restaurant, Luke wrapped his arm around Lorelai's waist as they walked to the door and said goodbye to Anna and April. He only removed it to return April's goodbye hug, and replaced it immediately, keeping it there as they walked to the car, Rory telling them what she and April had talked about in the bookstore.

Since the first time April herself had dropped the bombshell of who exactly she was on her, Lorelai felt like everything could actually work out after all.

Step by step.

tbc…


	9. Six Pictures

"You can't do that!" Lorelai shrieked in horror.

"Why not?"

"Because, that's against the rules."

"Since when are you a follower or rules?" Luke shot back.

"I always follow the rules!" she gasped in shock, putting her hands on her hips.

"Oh please. Last time you made me play Life with you and Rory you purposely landed on all of the 'Have a baby' squares just so you could add another person to your car so you could name it."

"I did not!" she protested.

"Please," he huffed.

"Well this time you're cheating," she said with a sigh, reaching across the table and the game board for Luke's Scrabble tiles from where she sat on the floor. "You have extra tiles over there, too, don't you?"

"I do not have extra tiles," he insisted, slapping her hand away. "And I was not cheating when I added an S onto the end of a word."

"That's your version of the story. And that's what you've got hoarded over there, isn't it?" she gasped. "All the S tiles!" she looked down at her own tiles in front of her on the coffee table. "You're so busted, Luke Danes. I don't have any S tiles."

He rolled his eyes. "This is why I put up such a fight about playing games with you," he mumbled as she reached across the board for his tiles again. He moved his tiles out of her reach and she crawled over, trying to grab them, and he quickly moved them behind him. She climbed over his lap, trying to reach the tiles, when she lost her balance and fell into him, toppling both of them over, causing the tiles to spill.

"See, now look," he sighed, trying, and failing, to keep a laugh in.

"I'm looking," she said, reaching for the tiles near them while still lying on top of him, "I'm looking right at all of the S tiles all over the floor."

He shook his head in amusement. "Lorelai, jeez."

She grinned at him and pushed herself up off him just as the door opened. "We're having a rematch later. Where there will be no cheating," she said, pointing at him sternly then brushing off her jeans.

He rolled his eyes and sat up, beginning to collect the scattered tiles as Lorelai noticed Rory and April.

"Hey, there you girls are."

"Here we are," Rory agreed. It was the night of April's date and Rory had picked April up from Woodbridge on her way home from school, since Anna had to work and Rory was coming home already, anyway. "And, uh," Rory studied Luke, picking up the Scrabble tiles. "What happened here?"

Lorelai opened her mouth to say something when Luke cut in. "Your Mom wanted to play Scrabble. Need I say more?"

Rory chuckled. "Enough said."

"Okay, so!" Lorelai said, clapping her hands together excitedly. "Two hours until Freddy's due here, right?" Lorelai asked April.

"Right," April confirmed. She played with the hem of her sweater. "I'm kind of nervous," she admitted.

"Oh, I know," Lorelai assured her. "That's normal. But you're going to have a blast, trust me."

April smiled, hopeful. "I hope so."

"So you brought your stuff," Lorelai noticed. "Let's see, we should probably start with your hair and then the make up."

"Make up?" Luke piped up, dropping the Scrabble tiles into the box. "No one ever said anything about make up."

Lorelai rolled her eyes. "Of course make up. It's a dance."

"But she doesn't need make up."

"Of course not," Lorelai agreed. "But it's just fun to put it on."

"But--"

"Luke, Hon, you've never been a teenage girl. Let us have this one."

"Fine," he muttered. "But not too much."

Lorelai shook her head and turned back to April. "Okay, let's go to Rory's room."

"I brought all my make up," Rory added, patting the bag she had over her shoulder.

"Cool," April said, studying the bag. "Is all of that make up? You have a lot of make up."

"I've been collecting since I was about your age," Rory told her.

"Can I wear lipstick?" April asked Lorelai and Rory as they headed to Rory's room.

Luke sighed. "I'll be… somewhere where there's no make up."

Lorelai turned to look at him and gave him a wink.

xxxxxx

"So, what do you say?" Rory asked, rifling through a make up bag as she and Lorelai put the finishing touches on April's make up. "Blush?"

"I don't think we should overdo it," Lorelai said, peering at April as she sat in front of Rory's mirror. "What do you think? Blush?" she asked April.

April shrugged. "Maybe a little. It is a big day."

Lorelai and Rory exchanged a smile. "Okay then, a touch of blush it is," Lorelai said, taking the blush from Rory and applying a bit to April. She then directed her to look at the mirror. "What do you think?"

April peered at herself. "I think it's good."

"Good!" Rory said, excitedly. "I think you look pretty."

"I second that," Lorelai said. "Not that you need the make up to look pretty."

"Very true," Rory agreed.

"Okay," Lorelai said to April. "Rory and I will go out and get our cameras ready," Lorelai teased, "and you can put your dress on and come out and model it for us and our cameras when you're done."

April nodded and giggled and Lorelai and Rory left the room, stepping into the kitchen. Lorelai grabbed her camera from the kitchen table. "I better make sure the batteries in this are charged," she realized. "I'd like to be able to take more than six pictures this time. Remember at your graduation?"

"Yes," Rory groaned.

"In fact, this time my goal is at least six good pictures."

"Most people would choose a number like five in this kind of situation."

"Dare to be different."

"So, things seem to be… good."

"What?" Lorelai asked, looking up from her camera at Rory, apparently not following her subject change.

"You and Luke, things seem to be good. After all, you guys were playing Scrabble when I came home, that seems to be a sign of things being good."

"Oh," Lorelai realized. "Yeah, they are. They're very good, especially considering."

"And things with April seem to be going well."

Lorelai nodded. "Very well."

"So, what does all this mean?" Rory prodded.

Lorelai let out a little sigh. "I'm not really sure, we're taking things one step at a time. But it's good so far, and the progress we've made is good. I mean, we haven't even broached the subject of marriage again, and we haven't… " Lorelai trailed off, "you know been together again or anything… but what we've accomplished so far has been good."

"You two are going to be okay," Rory decided.

Lorelai smiled at her. "I think so, too. Which is really unbelievable to me after all the crap we've gone through."

Rory shrugged. "Well, what do you expect? You're Luke and Lorelai."

"She says as if it's some universal truth."

"Well, it kind of is," Rory smirked. They were interrupted by the door to Rory's room opening and April emerging in her dress.

"Wow. You look pretty," Lorelai grinned.

"You look fabulous!" Rory added, clapping her hands together in excitement. "Freddy won't know what hit him."

April laughed nervously as she spun around so they could see the whole dress. "Thanks."

"Let's show you off to your father," Lorelai decided. "Luke!" she called, stepping out of the kitchen and yelling randomly towards the living room and the stairs, unsure of where, exactly, he was. "Luuuuke!" she repeated.

"What?" Luke's voice returned from somewhere within the house, where he was most likely hiding from all things girly.

"Come take a look at your daughter. She's all pretty," Lorelai teased, returning to her normal voice as Luke came down the stairs and gave April a smile, which April shyly returned. Luke came into the room a moment later and stopped when he saw April.

"Wow," he said with a smile, momentarily taken back by how different April looked when she was all dressed up. "You look… beautiful," Luke stated.

"Thanks," April said, blushing slightly.

"Hey, let's go make sure you've got everything in your purse," Rory said, guiding April into the living room. "You don't want to forget a necessity, it's a disaster, believe me."

"She looks like you," Lorelai told Luke suddenly, turning to him when April and Rory had disappeared. "When I was doing her make up, I kept seeing it. You don't notice with the glasses as much, it kind of hides her face. But she has your cheekbones and your nose. I noticed it at her birthday party, too, when I painted her face."

"Yeah," Luke agreed. "She does."

"No wonder she's so pretty, then," Lorelai said, nudging Luke in the side. "She is yours."

"Oh stop," he said, looking down and blushing slightly.

"And she blushes just like that, too."

Luke's response was interrupted by a knock at the door.

"That must be Freddy and his parents," Luke deduced. "Why do I suddenly feel the urge to forbid April from dating until she's Rory's age?"

"Ooh, camera time!" Lorelai said excitedly, ignoring Luke and grabbing her camera again before heading into the living room.

Later, after April and Freddy had left for the dance and Rory had left for home, Lorelai bounded into the kitchen where Luke was at the refrigerator getting a drink, with her digital camera in her hand.

"Look at this picture, Luke, it's adorable," she announced, thrusting the camera at him. "Freddy has his arm around her and everything." She squinted down at the picture again. "Aww, they're so cute together." Luke looked down at the picture for a few moments and then looked up at Lorelai again. "I think I've got at least six really, really good ones after all. What?" she asked when she noticed his gaze was intently focused on her. "Something wrong?"

"No," he said softly. "Everything's… right." He looked down at the picture again and then back up at Lorelai. "You're just… amazing. Here you are taking the time to send my kid off to a dance, making her feel like an eighth grade dance is the most important thing in the world, taking pictures of her and getting all excited about the best ones, and I just… I don't know why I deserve you. After how I handled this situation for so long and you just... you're just… I love you."

She grinned up at him. "She's your daughter, Luke. She's a part of you, therefore, she's important to me."

"I know. I just… thank you."

"Anytime, Babe," she said, giving him a soft kiss.

"I hope she has a good time."

Lorelai nodded. "Me too. I'm sure she will, though. If it's any indication by the look on Freddy's face," she pointed down at the camera, "he likes her, too."

"Not too much, I hope," Luke said with a frown, squinting at the picture as if that would tell him if Freddy had something inappropriate in mind.

"No, never too much. Just the right amount," Lorelai teased. Luke laughed and pulled her into his arms. She laughed as well and rested her head on his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to him tightly.

"We're doing really well this time," he noted.

"Yeah," she said softly, her head still on his shoulder. "We really are." They were silent for a few moments before she pulled back and looked at him. "Rematch time!"

"No, no, wait..." Luke said suddenly as she tugged on his hand. "What do we do about tonight?"

"What?"

"Freddy's parents are dropping April off back here."

"Yes?"

"And she's staying over."

"Yes, and?" Lorelai prompted.

"So, how does that work?"

"Well, she comes in and goes to sleep here and will still be here in the morning."

"But where is she going to sleep?"

Lorelai shook her head. "Is this the first you've started thinking about this?"

"Well…"

"Way to plan ahead, Luke."

"Well have you already…"

"She's sleeping in Rory's room tonight. Rory's not here, so she can have the bed and everything. I changed the sheets this morning."

"Oh," Luke realized. "Okay. Good. Thanks." Lorelai nodded and tugged on his hand again. "Wait…"

"Now what?"

"What about me?"

"What about you?"

"I have to be here," Luke realized.

"Yes. And?"

"Where am I going to, uh…"

Lorelai rolled her eyes. "On the couch, Luke, of course," she said sarcastically and slapped him lightly on the arm. "Upstairs with me, silly."

"But we haven't…"

"Hey, believe it or not, we have spent a night or two sleeping in the same bed without having sex, remember?" Lorelai teased. "We'll be fine."

"Okay," he agreed and allowed her to pull him into the living room this time. "Hey, Lorelai?"

"Hmm?" she asked as she sat on the couch and started organizing the Scrabble tiles. "We don't really have to play, but I should clean these up."

"No, not that. I mean about the whole… sex thing."

She sat up, surprised, and stiffened, looking at him. "Oh. Well… what about it?"

"I just wonder… what we have to wait for, or… I'm not trying to pressure you into it or anything at all, not after everything. I just want to have some idea of what has to happen first…" he looked down, uncomfortable and clearly not liking the idea of having this conversation. "Until we're ready to…I just don't want to… I need to know when it's okay for…"

"Luke," she laughed a little, standing up from the couch and giving his hands a squeeze. "There's no specific reason or thing that we're waiting for before we have sex again, at least not for me. It just has to be right. We'll know."

He nodded. "Okay, right."

"So, Scrabble or not?"

He studied her for a minute. "Fine. But only if you don't cheat."

She gasped. "Me!"

"Oh, just sit down."

"Fine," she sat down on the floor next to the table and the game board. "First let me count the S's."

xxxxxx

Lorelai, already dressed in a t-shirt and sweatpants, had just finished turning down the bed when Luke walked into the bedroom, hesitantly, later that night.

"Hey," she smiled at him as she smoothed out the sheet. "April good?"

"Yeah, she's good," Luke said. "She won't stop talking about the fact that Freddy held her hand, though."

Lorelai chuckled. "That's sweet."

"Yeah, sure, but Freddy is a boy."

"Oh, Luke."

"Well? He is." Lorelai laughed again and fluffed her pillow. "I'm so glad she had a good time, though, her face just lights up when she talks about what they did tonight." Lorelai nodded, and Luke seemed to realize something. "Hey, Lorelai I don't have…" Lorelai cut him off by gesturing at the end of the bed, where she had placed a t-shirt of his and a pair of boxers. "Oh. Okay." He flashed her a thankful smile for knowing.

"Your toothbrush is still in the bathroom," she added quietly, "under the sink."

"Oh," he said again. "Good, okay." He wasn't sure if he was surprised that she hadn't thrown his toothbrush out or not. He looked down at the clothes on the bed and picked them up. "So I guess I should…" he gestured at the bathroom. "Change."

"Right, sure," Lorelai agreed, realizing that the situation was a little strange. They were together. They'd seen each other naked before. And yet, there was an unwritten rule that they couldn't change in front of each other.

"Is this weird, that I have to change in the bathroom?" he seemed to read her mind.

She laughed and crinkled up her nose a bit. "A little. But just look at it like this, if I see you with your clothes off after all this time, there's no telling what might happen, and April is here. So that's why you have to go change in the bathroom."

He laughed a little at that before going in the bathroom. Lorelai sat down on her side of the bed and waited for him to return, playing with the pillows and the hem of he sheet while she waited. When he returned, ready for bed as well, she watched him as he sat down on his side of the bed carefully.

"It's been a long time since I've spent the night here," he spoke the obvious.

"Yeah," she agreed as they laid down under the blankets, each of them lying on their right sides. "It has been. But it's right, this is our bed, you know?"

"Yeah," he realized, shutting off the light. "It is."

"I spent so many nights…" she sighed, realizing what she was admitting. But in the dark, facing away from him, it was easy to admit things. "I cried myself to sleep so many times during those months because it was supposed to be our bed and not just mine."

"I'm back now," he assured her in a soft whisper, letting a hand come to rest on her side, and she nodded, wondering what those implications meant. Would he be back, forever? Would it be completely their bed again, one day, and for the rest of their lives? But she knew now wasn't the time for those questions, so she simply nodded.

"When did you find out about April?" she asked softly, turning her head to look back at him over her shoulder. For the first time she could ask the question without resentment or bitterness or sadness. It was asked out of simple curiosity and with acceptance. "Was it before or after we'd finished remodeling?"

"Uh," he seemed a little thrown off by the question. "After. But before we finished the bedroom. Around the time that my grandmother's furniture was in here."

She laughed a little. "Oh, right, those lovely pieces of furniture." His grandmother's furniture seemed so long ago. "Then this means this is the first time we're really sleeping in this bed together where everything is okay. No secrets. No distance."

"Yeah I guess so," he realized. 'Almost a year later."

"About eleven months later," she agreed. "Is everything okay?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, we're supposed to talk, so I just thought I'd check in on how you're feeling about everything related to you and me."

He leaned down to kiss her behind her ear and she could feel him smile against her skin. "Yes. Everything is okay. Everything is better than okay."

She nodded. "Okay, just wanted to make sure everything was… working out for you, too. I feel like everything is falling into place for me, with April and getting past what I did that night and everything, and I wanted to make sure it was for you, too. After all, you see it all differently than I do."

"It is," he assured her, squeezing her side. "I already did the forgiving, and it's proved to be the right choice. And I feel really, really good about us."

He pulled her closer to him and dropped an arm around her waist just like he always used to when they fell asleep at night. "This okay?" he made sure his contact wasn't too much.

"Definitely okay," she agreed with a smile, turning her head back towards him to kiss him goodnight. "Night."

"Goodnight, Lorelai," he said, leaning down to kiss her beneath her ear once more.

Lorelai woke up the next morning to an empty bed. She groaned and looked at the clock and saw that it was just after ten-thirty. For a minute she forgot that Luke had spent the night and that April was downstairs, as she had been so used to waking up alone lately anyway. Then suddenly she realized, and wondered where he'd gotten to.

When she ventured downstairs, she found him, in the kitchen with April, where they were cooking breakfast. She observed them for a while, watching April laugh and concentrate on whatever she had in the bowl in front of her, watching Luke step closer to her to check on her progress, watching Luke smile at her and laugh when she'd say something.

It only seemed right that this father-daughter bonding was happening in there. In what was still officially her house, but should be theirs. This is where Luke should spend time with her daughter and teach her how to cook.

"Hey," Luke greeted her when he noticed her in the doorway, watching. "You're up."

"Yeah," she said with a yawn. "Morning. Morning, April. Sleep okay?"

April nodded. "Yep! Rory's bed is comfortable."

"Good, I'm glad," Lorelai said. She stepped closer to the counter to see what Luke and April were making. "Pancakes?" she asked.

"Banana pancakes," April told her. "They're my favorite. Do you like them?"

"I do," Lorelai told her. "I like just about any kind of pancake."

"Though if it's covered in chocolate, she likes it best," Luke noted.

She glared at him and turned to April. "Sweetie, did you call your mom yet this morning?"

"No," she realized. "Should I call her now?"

"If you think she'll be up. She'd probably like to hear from you and hear about last night. You can use the phone in the living room if you want."

April nodded and put her mixing spoon down in the bowl of pancake batter and brushed her hands off, hurrying into the living room.

"I'm hungry," Lorelai told Luke.

"Well, I'm making breakfast."

Lorelai went over to the bowl of batter April had left behind and started mixing it. "So apparently both our daughters can cook, then," Lorelai realized. "I think I'm the odd one out."

"Well, at least you'll always have someone around who can cook."

"Very true, my friend," she said, staring down at the batter she was mixing. "If I could cook, what would I really be doing to this?"

"Folding the batter," Luke said absently as he removed a pancake from the frying pan.

"Um, excuse me, what?" she asked, a blank expression on her face.

"Like this," he said, mimicking the movements she should be doing in the air for a moment before returning to the pancakes in the frying pan.

She stared at him for a moment before putting the spoon down. "See, I knew there was a reason why I don't cook."

Luke rolled his eyes and stepped behind her. "You could if you wanted to, and you can do this. It's simple." He handed her the spoon then took her hand and guided it in the motions to fold the batter. "See? It's easy."

"Hmm, yeah," she said, concentrating more on his body so close to hers. He stepped away and returned to the frying pan. When he turned back to her, he frowned.

"I said fold the batter, not taste it," he smirked.

"I didn't!"

"Oh yeah?" he asked, stepping closer to her. He wiped at the corner of her lip. "Your face disagrees with you."

She laughed, realizing she was caught. "Oops. Gone?"

"Almost," he said, leaning down to kiss her lips. "There."

"How very kind of you," she thanked him with a giggle.

April returned. "Did you get your mom on the phone?" Luke asked.

"Yep," April said. "She was glad I called. She said to tell you thanks, Lorelai. For helping me get ready last night."

"Oh, sure thing. It was my pleasure."

"And she said to tell you thanks for reminding me to call her," April added. "She knew, somehow."

"It's a mom thing," Lorelai explained and April shrugged.

"Ready for breakfast?" Luke asked them with a smile. "I think we've made enough pancakes to start eating."

"Yes, I'm starving," April agreed. Lorelai nodded her agreement and smiled as April sat down at the table and Luke brought her a plate of pancakes. Suddenly Luke was holding a plate out to her as well. She thanked him and carried her plate to the table, sitting down across from April.

"And just what are you having today, Mr. Healthful?"

"Regular pancakes, no bananas." April and Lorelai exchanged a look and rolled their eyes.

"He doesn't know what he's missing out on," April whispered and Lorelai laughed.

Lorelai had a feeling this threesome having breakfast in the morning was going to be a regular occurrence.

tbc...


	10. Six Times

When she and Luke had been apart, Lorelai had claimed she had missed him forcing her to watch baseball games. Right now she wasn't sure why, exactly, she had missed that. She'd fought Luke over what to watch for ten minutes before she had given up and taken up residence on one end of the couch with paperwork from the inn on her lap, her glasses perched on her nose and her legs across Luke's lap.

Every once in a while she could feel Luke glance over at her and away from the game before softly rubbing random circles on her legs.

"Hey," she finally said, glancing at the game on TV and then at Luke, nudging his thigh with her foot.

"What?" he asked, his eyes focused on the screen even as he turned his head in her direction. The announcer said something Lorelai didn't understand, Luke groaned, and his eyes finally came to rest on hers.

"I don't understand baseball," she told him.

"I know that," he assured her. "Believe me, I learned that when I tried to watch the '04 series with you around."

"Oh, hush," she teasingly rolled her eyes. She was pretty sure she would never live down the questions she had asked him during the Yankee — Red Sox World Series.

"Although, I have to admit," Luke went on, clearly ignoring her request to hush, "I think you would be highly entertaining at a game."

She raised her eyebrows at him. "I don't know if I should take that as a compliment or not."

"Sure, take it as one," he said with an evasive shrug, turning back to the TV before turning to smirk at her.

"Mean," she said, giving his leg a push with her foot. "Hey, did you, uh… how did April like the game I got you tickets for? Or did you not take her?"

"Oh," Luke realized, turning to focus on Lorelai again, serious this time. "Yeah, I took her. It was great. You were right, she's not really a sporting event kind of kid, but she got into it. She bought all this stuff and she was all decked out by the time she got home. She said she likes the team now because I do," Lorelai smiled softly at that, "and we had a good time. It was actually… that day was the first time she called me dad."

Lorelai smiled and sat up a bit, putting the cap on her pen. "I wanted to know more about how that happened so badly," she admitted, excited to finally be broaching the subject.

Luke grinned at her. "Okay, so we were at the game," he began, clearly as eager to share this story with her as she was to hear it. "And we were just talking. We were talking about you, actually, she asked why you weren't around and if our break up was her fault--"

"Yeah," Lorelai interrupted, "she mentioned something about that to me. I had a thought when I was talking to her at the diner that day and I wanted to assure her I hadn't been avoiding her and she said you explained it all to her."

"I did. I tried to, anyway… it was pretty complex. But anyway we were talking, then this guy selling cotton candy comes by…"

"Ahh, see, there is a reason to go to baseball games."

"So she looked and me and she said, 'Dad, can we get some?'"

Lorelai put a hand over her heart, touched by the story. "Just like that?"

Luke nodded. "Just like that. I didn't realize what she had said at first. I started going on about how bad cotton candy is for you--"

Lorelai held her hands out in a knowing gesture. "Of course."

"Then her words caught up with me. But it didn't seem weird, it seemed… normal. I think that's why it took me a minute to realize what she had said."

"Aww, Hon," Lorelai said with a sigh. "I'm so glad this has gone so well for the two of you."

"It is a little strange, though, you know?" he shrugged. "There's suddenly a teenager calling me Dad. I mean, she came out of nowhere… and I'm her dad."

Lorelai sighed. "I hate that you lost all that time with her. Especially when you're so good with her, and I've seen you with Rory and Jess... you're good with them, too."

"Anna didn't think I'd want to be a part of it," Luke explained with a shrug.

"But how could she think that?" Lorelai protested adamantly. "I would have never, ever thought that if it had been me."

"Well, you know me. I mean, I kind of give off that impression to other people… and I was younger then, too, it was probably even worse back then."

"Oh, come on," Lorelai protested. "We've known each other what, ten years now, right? That means April was probably about two at the time we met. And even when we first met I could see the kind of guy you really were. I find it hard to believe you could have changed that much in only two or three years."

"I guess."

She watched him for a moment, clearly reading his expressions. "Luke, don't blame yourself for missing out on April's life. It wasn't your fault, no matter how you acted. Anna should have told you."

"But I should have--"

"It wasn't your fault, Luke. She was wrong."

Luke nodded. "I just hate that she thought…"

"I know," Lorelai assured him. "It makes me angry," she added. "That someone would keep a father, a good father, away from a kid, especially when… well, look at the father my kid had. And he had every chance to be there. It just makes me mad that someone wouldn't even give you the chance."

"There's nothing we can do about it now," Luke said with a sigh. "And April found me. It's going to be okay."

"That's true," Lorelai said with a soft sigh, thinking of how much Luke had missed. "And in the long run … well, you still have a lot of things to be a part of with her."

There was sudden cheering coming from the TV, and Luke and Lorelai both turned suddenly to see what had happened.

"Looks like your team is losing," Lorelai noted.

"Losing by a long shot," Luke agreed.

"See? I know enough about baseball to know which team is losing."

"Yes, I'm very proud of you for being able to discern that the team with the lower number next to their name is the one that's losing." She shot a playful glare back at him. "They lost when April and I went to the game, too. She was bummed about that until I told her we could go to another one."

"That could be your thing with her, huh? Baseball?"

"I don't know…" Luke shrugged. "She thought it was fun once, but after the thrill of it's gone she'll probably get bored of it."

"I'm willing to bet she won't if you're there."

Luke smiled at her and she smiled back, nudging his thigh with her toe.

"Would you stop with the foot already?" he asked with a grumble, swatting at her feet.

She smirked, knowing the expression on his face. "Why? Causing you to get a little excited?"

"Lorelai… jeez."

She laughed. "I mean, I'd expect this from you if my legs were bare, I know your fascination with my legs, but only the toes are exposed." She wiggled the toes in question at him.

"Never mind," he grumbled with a roll of his eyes as she nudged his thigh again in obvious defiance. "Lorelai…"

She pulled her feet from his lap and sat up, scooting next to him. "Besides, what are you complaining about? Is getting a little excited so bad?" she said in a whisper.

Luke sucked in his breath and looked at her as she leaned in to give him a soft kiss. "But we haven't since…"

"I know," she said, sliding onto his lap and straddling him. "But I think we're ready. Do you?"

He thought about it for a moment. He recalled their conversation just minutes ago, where she had been excited to hear his story about April and he had been excited to tell it, their conversation about Anna and how they had really talked about things that were on their mind. Not to mention the fact that he just really, really wanted her. He nodded as her lips found their way to the sensitive spot beneath his ear. "Yeah, I think… I think we are."

She barely heard his answer as she was intently focused on her task. But she had heard the answer and she moved her lips from his neck to his jaw and finally to his lips. Once she fused her lips to his, it was like she couldn't stop. She attacked him with kisses over and over, moaning when he returned them with equal fervor and giggling when his hands slid under her shirt, rubbing circles on her stomach before slowly making their way higher, causing her giggles to turn into sighs and gasps.

"Upstairs," she whispered against his mouth during one of the brief moments their lips were separated.

"Are you sure?" he asked, breathless, as she got off his lap and stood up, grabbing his hand and pulling him up with her.

"Are you kidding?"

He chuckled at that momentarily before kissing her and backing her towards the stairs. They stumbled up the first few steps, making it onto the landing successfully. Unable to fathom the thought of making it up the rest of the stairs at the moment, Luke backed her into the wall and continued kissing her, trailing his kisses from her lips across her face and down to her neck, where he found the sensitive spot beneath her ear and planted a series of kisses there before he began nibbling and sucking on the skin, causing her to gasp.

"Luke," she moaned between breaths. She felt him chuckle against her skin before resuming his ministrations. "God, you're evil," she muttered as her eyes fluttered closed. The next thing she knew, he was pulling at the back of her thighs, and she took the cue, jumping up slightly and wrapping her legs around him as he held her tightly to him. She squealed in surprise and giggled as he carried her up the rest of the stairs that they never would have made it up otherwise.

He deposited her on the bed and fell down on it with her, as she didn't release the grip she had around his neck, and she immediately sought out his lips again, keeping her arms wrapped tightly around him. They kissed for what seemed like forever, enjoying the fact that they were together again, making up for all the kisses they had missed over the summer. She slid her hands from his neck to his chest, unbuttoning his flannel shirt and sliding it off his shoulders before quickly removing his hat and tossing it in the same direction as his shirt. She giggled slightly at his hair, messed up from having his hat removed so suddenly, but he shut her up with a kiss.

Pulling away momentarily he gazed down into her eyes and she smiled at him softly.

"What?" she asked softly, noticing the intensity in his stare.

"Nothing. I've missed you, that's all," he said, planting a quick kiss on her nose.

"I've missed you too," she said quietly, afraid her voice would crack with emotion if she tried to speak too loudly.

In what typically was Lorelai behavior, Luke attempted to lighten the mood. "Now can we please get rid of your pants so we can start missing those?"

Lorelai let out an amused laugh, always delighted at any slightly dirty comment Luke would make, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Oh, I don't think we'll be missing them once they're gone, but be my guest," she gave him confirmation before she began sucking on his neck again.

His hand slowly slid to the snap of her jeans, unbuttoning them quickly and tugging the zipper down. She lifted her hips to allow him to slide them down her legs and off her body, tossing them in some unknown direction. She felt her heartbeat picking up a pace ten times faster than was normal accompanied by butterflies in her stomach.

She was nervous, she realized. She couldn't remember ever being nervous, doing this with Luke, except for maybe the first time. Even when they first slept together again after being apart the last time, it had gone so fast, happened so suddenly, that she hadn't had time to think about being nervous as she had a hundred other thoughts going through her head such as, 'Is Luke really here?' and 'Did that really just happen when I opened the door?'

She couldn't figure out what, exactly, was making her nervous this time. Maybe it was because she knew, and she knew he knew, that the last person she had done this with hadn't been him. Maybe it was because it had been five months since they had done this. Maybe it was because she knew Luke was giving her another chance that she didn't really deserve.

"You're nervous," Luke stated suddenly, running his hands over her thighs and up her sides, coming to rest on her hips. He kissed her softly, reassuringly. "It's just me," he told her in a soft, comforting tone.

That made her smile, and already she felt some of the butterflies dissipate. "I know. I just… it's been a while," she admitted.

"I know," he agreed, pausing momentarily to nip at her ear. "Though not as long as the first eight years we went before doing this."

She let out a laugh, feeling slightly less nervous. "You've got a point."

"All I'm thinking about is you," he assured her, somehow knowing that somewhere deep inside her she was worried that with every move he made she was wondering if he was wondering if Christopher had made the same one, most recently. "You and me and us, and that's it."

She let out a sigh. "How do you always know what I'm thinking?" she asked, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair.

"It's a gift," he joked, kissing her lips again gently. "Lorelai, if you're not ready then we don't have to…"

"No, I want to," she said quickly. "I am ready, I'm so ready it's ridiculous," she added. "It's just that for a while there I thought we'd lost this and... I'm bound to be nervous, I feel like it's the first time all over again."

"Well if that's the case we're in luck, because the first time was pretty damn amazing," he said in that low gravely voice that drove her crazy.

She giggled. "Let's see if we can top it," she challenged, tilting her head up to capture his lips with her own, kissing him furiously. "And while we're at it, maybe we can break our record of six times," she winked.

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" he asked again, breaking away from the kiss to make sure she was okay. His eyes locked on hers, and she looked back, unable to break the gaze. Luke. This was Luke, and the look of love and adoration in his eyes was enough to reassure her.

"Yes," she said, looking him in the eyes. "I want to be with you." He could see it in her eyes that she was telling the truth and gave her a little nod before breaking the gaze and resuming kissing her. "Six times," she reminded him. "We've gotta get to work."

Her hands found the hem of t-shirt and she tugged it up, forcing him to break the kiss momentarily as she pulled it over his head. He pulled her shirt off in return and she immediately reciprocated by reaching down and unbuttoning his jeans, helping him slide them down his legs.

He settled himself down on top of her, placing his hands at the side of her head, guiding her mouth to his again. They kissed slowly and deeply for a long time, simply enjoying the moment and the presence of each other. She was the first to break the kiss, and she looked up at him with desire in her eyes.

"Luke," she pleaded softly, shifting impatiently beneath him. He took his cue and reached behind her to unclasp her bra, tossing it away from the bed. She laughed when his gaze inevitably dropped to her breasts as soon as the garment was gone. "Missed them I see," she teased, laughing as he kissed his way down her chest. "Mmm," she mumbled when his lips found her breast. "I've missed that."

He chuckled against her, and she let out a moan from the vibrations. He kissed his way back up to her lips, planting a quick kiss on her mouth before pulling back to look in her eyes as his hands trailed down her legs, coming to rest at the waistband of her underwear. He watched her face to make sure that she was okay before sliding the material off of her, and she gave him a broad smile.

He leaned down to kiss beneath her ear. "You're so beautiful," he whispered in her ear.

"Thank you," she said softly. He had said these words to her so many times, but she never found them any less satisfying. Maybe it was because the tenderness in his voice and the sincerity and awe with which he spoke them was so unlike the grumpy Luke she had known for so long. She reached down to push off his boxers and grinned at him. "And so are you."

He pressed himself against her again in response and their bodies came together barrier free for the first time in months. They stared at each other for a moment, their gazes locked, a million thoughts running through their minds. Lorelai was the first to sum them all up and vocalize what they were both thinking.

"I love you," she exhaled in a content sigh. Luke ran his hands up her sides and back down to her hips, causing her to shiver.

"I love you too," he replied without missing a beat. He leaned down to give her a soft kiss. "So much."

With that she slid her legs up on his hips and wrapped her hands around his neck, grinning at him before capturing his lips with her own again.

When the kiss broke, he looked down at her, and she gave him a slight nod as confirmation to continue. He slid inside her carefully and watched as she shut her eyes, overcome by the moment. He paused for a moment as they adjusted to the feeling of being connected together again after so long. Lorelai let out a soft sigh.

"Luke," she muttered in contentment, sliding her hands down to his back and rubbing circles over his skin.

"Lorelai," he returned with a smile, and she grinned back at him knowingly. He began to move, slowly at first, her eyes fluttering shut at the feeling. She pushed her hips back at him and he groaned in response. He began to increase the speed of his thrusts as he could see she was in need of more. Her mouth dropped open in pleasure and a moan escaped. "God, Lorelai. So good," he told her, reaching for her left hand and entwining it with his right.

She mumbled something incoherent in response and he let the fingertips of his left hand skim her side. The light touch caused her to gasp and then giggle. Her giggles turned into moans when Luke suddenly shifted and hit a different spot inside her.

"Luke," she gasped breathlessly, raking her nails across his back with her free hand and squeezing her eyes shut. "Oh my God. Don't… don't stop."

He grunted in response, indicating that he couldn't stop if he wanted to. She laughed, partially because she knew exactly what he was saying with his grunt and partially because he felt so good she couldn't take much more, which caused him to laugh in return and it was as if they had never been apart. They were them, just as they always were. Connected together in the most intimate way, laughing and grinning at each other as if there was nothing else in the world but the two of them. And at the moment, there wasn't.

They kept their eyes locked together, realizing how far they had come, how much they loved each other, how much they were willing to bend for each other and how willing they were to forgive each other for screw-ups. They'd gone through so much. Ten years of history, of good and bad, of Luke being wrong and Lorelai being wrong, of Luke messing up and Lorelai messing up, of Luke willing to do anything for her and Lorelai willing to do anything for him, and they still loved each other, needed each other, as much as always.

Their eyes remained locked until Lorelai closed them as she muttered Luke's name over and over as she felt the waves of pleasure wash over her. The feeling of Luke pressed so close to her, his hands runnng over her, while experiencing so much pleasure was quite possibly the best feeling in the world. Luke's thrusts became frantic as he released himself inside of her with a groan only moments later.

Immediately after she felt him pull the blankets around them and she snuggled up into his side, kissing him quickly, over and over. She buried her head in his shoulder as they caught their breath and the next thing she knew, she was crying. Softly at first, but then she began sniffling and letting out shaky breaths. Luke gently rubbed his hand over her back and pulled her closer to him as she cried, seeming to get it. She finally tilted her head up towards him, despite the fact that her tears were completely embarrassing, and he wiped away a tear that was on her cheek.

"Good tears, right?" he asked softly, running a hand through her hair, looking at her as if there was nothing in the world he could love more.

She nodded, reaching up to wipe at her eyes, having composed herself. "Yeah, good tears. I just…" she sighed, not knowing how to explain.

"I know," he assured her, kissing her on the head. She sighed and snuggled down into him, draping a leg over his middle.

"I love you," she said with a happy sigh.

"I love you too," he replied immediately, giving her thigh a squeeze, causing her to smile against his chest.

"Wow," she said, wiping away any remaining tears. "Could I be any more vulnerable?" she joked. "Here I am both naked and crying because I love you so much. Talk about letting someone see all of you."

"You're safe with me," he assured her.

"I know," she said in a whisper, removing her head from his chest and gazing up at him. "That's why I let you see me like this. And not just now but all the time when I'm vulnerable." She placed her head back down on his chest and felt him nod from where her head was resting. "I love this moment," she went on. She'd been unusually quiet during sex, and was apparently making up for this by adapting her chatty behavior afterwards. "I always love this moment, afterwards, when we're like this," she said, gesturing to their position. "I just feel so safe and happy and loved and I could just stay like this forever," she said with a sigh, letting her eyes pop open to sneak a peek at Luke.

"I'd have no complaints about staying like this forever," Luke agreed, letting his hand slide down her arm, rubbing it gently. "We can try and recreate this situation as much as you'd like during the rest of our lives," he teased.

She grinned at him with that smile that he knew only he ever saw–that smile that had always been just for him, even before they had gotten together-- and let out a laugh. "Sounds good," she giggled as she leaned up to kiss him on the lips. "Mmm I don't want to get up. But I should get clothes."

"I strongly disagree," he said, wrapping his arms around her more tightly as if that would stop her from getting up or getting clothes. "I like you like this," he whispered in her ear, causing her to shiver.

"Mmm okay," she agreed, making herself comfortable against him again. "But you're going to be in charge of keeping me warm tonight, then."

He chuckled and gave her a squeeze. "Deal."

xxxxxx

Lorelai awoke the next morning with a strong arm wrapped around her. She had never felt so comfortable, safe, secure, and loved in her life. She'd woken up in Luke's embrace plenty of times, but this time there was something unmistakably different and comforting about it. It was a feeling she would never be able to describe.

She let her eyes open and glanced down at the arm wrapped around her, then turned to find its owner, who was already awake and peering down at her. He smiled at her when she turned to him, and she grinned in response.

"You're here," she observed, her grin getting larger.

"I am," he said with a grin of his own.

"I've missed having you here in the morning," she said. "Especially like this," she added, gesturing to their situation. Even when he had spent the night there, with her, before, she hadn't woken up with him in bed with her.

He chuckled. "I've missed that too," he said, kissing her on the top of her head.

"The bed welcomes you back, also," she teased. "Although I think we kind of wore him out last night."

He chuckled. "Why is the bed a 'him'?"

"Because he doesn't have a name, what else should I call him?"

"No, I mean--"

"We should name our bed!" she said, suddenly excited.

"We're not going to name our bed, Lorelai," he said, shocked. "That's where we... we can't have a name for the place that we..."

"Have sex?" she teased. "Funny, you have no problem having all the sex with me, but you can't say the word 'sex.'"

"We're not naming the place where we have sex," he finished adamantly.

"Well we've had sex on the couch before, and her name is--"

"Don't tell me," he cringed. "I don't want to know."

"Think of how you could confuse people, though!" she laughed. "'Oh, last night was real hot. Me, Lorelai, and Enrique had some fun.'"

"First of all, I would never even say that even without the mention of 'Enrique.' Secondly, Enrique? And what started all this in the first place... why is the bed automatically a 'he'?"

"Because if it's a 'she' that would just be weird on my part."

"And 'he' isn't wierd on my part?"

"Hmm," she pondered that. "Maybe a unisex name."

"Maybe no name at all," Luke suggested.

She turned in his arms so that she was able to kiss him. She kissed him once, twice, quickly on the lips, before securely attaching her lips to his own for a proper good morning kiss.

"Mmm," she mumbled against his lips when they broke away for air. "Morning."

"Good morning."

"Oh, no, we haven't put the 'good' into that saying just yet," she said, giving him a knowing look. She leaned down to kiss his lips quickly, again, before moving her kisses across his jaw and to the area beneath his ear, causing him to groan. "I see someone's still very sensitive right there," she teased, nibbling playfully at the area.

"Lorelai," he groaned.

"Yes?" she teased, muttering into the skin beneath his ear before moving to nibble on his earlobe.

"You're making it awfully hard to--"

"I'm making it awfully hard?" she cut in with an evil grin. "Hmm, Hon, I have to tell you, I don't see the problem with that."

He couldn't help but laugh and rolled them over so that he was on top of her. She squealed in surprise, but then sunk into their new position and looped her arms around his neck, pulling him down for a kiss.

"Let's make this a good morning now, shall we?" she giggled.

"I think it already is," he said softly, and she smiled at him lovingly before kissing him again.

After their proper good morning, Luke had only been allowed out of bed when he explained to Lorelai that he was intending on going downstairs to make her breakfast. She'd eagerly allowed him to leave the comfort of their warm bed at that, especially when he told her he would make her whatever she wanted, including chocolate chip pancakes, despite the fact they are so horribly unhealthy and "the exact opposite of the point of breakfast."

She'd toyed with the idea of taking a shower while he was downstairs in the kitchen but decided to hold off on it, thinking that if she waited until after breakfast she could possibly snag some company in the shower. It was so easy, falling back into life with Luke, she realized. She had been nervous momentarily the night before, but that had gone away as fast as it occurred and by morning all of the nerves and hesitation were gone.

They'd had breakfast together, though he had refused to consume anything involving chocolate for himself despite her begging him to eat a chocolate chip pancake, and then he told her he had to get to the diner in time for the lunch rush, which was when she managed to coerce him right into a shower with her, not that it had taken much to persuade him.

Luke had been the man she had ever taken a shower with. Before Luke, no man had ever spent the night at her place, and with other men, she rarely stayed at their places overnight because of Rory. The only person other than Luke she had been with since Rory had been away at Yale was Jason, and he wouldn't even sleep in the same bed with her so she hadn't even considered showering with him as a possibility. She was pretty sure that Luke was unaware of how many things he was the only one to experience with her… the first man she'd had sex with in her house, the first man she took a shower with, the first man she'd ever loved, the first man she didn't run away from, and the only man she had ever considered having another child with. Rory was so special to her that she had never even thought about having another baby at any point in her life, not seriously, until Luke. She realized he should probably know these things. That was part of their whole 'better communication' thing, wasn't it?

"I missed you!" she half-joked that night when she opened the door to reveal Luke. "And what am I going to have to do to get you to stop knocking? I'll do just about anything," she said with a raise of her eyebrows.

"I was gone six hours," he said, focusing on her first question. She shrugged and stood back, gesturing for him to come in. "Come outside with me," he said, rejecting her offer to come in.

"Why?" she asked with a frown.

"Just because. Trust me."

Lorelai shrugged and followed him outside. He took a seat on the top step and she followed his lead, plopping down beside him.

"What's up?" she asked with a raise of her eyebrow.

"I just thought it would be nice out here."

"Sure, I guess so. It's a nice night," she agreed and looked over at the yard then back at him. "So seriously now, what's up?"

"Jeez," he said, pretending to be frustrated with her. "I wanted to ask you something," he admitted.

"Okay." She watched him for a moment as he stared down at the steps before looking up at her. He looked her deep in the eyes for a moment before finding his voice.

"These past few months when we were apart I missed you like I never thought I could miss anyone. We've gone through so much, Lorelai, and we're still here, clawing our way through this. I knew I loved you and wanted to marry you before but now I'm even more convinced, after everything we've made it through, because no matter how bad things got, I still loved you more than I ever thought I could love anyone, and I…will you marry me?"

She couldn't help but laugh when she heard that come out of his mouth. "God, Luke, seriously. What do you think my answer will be to that one, huh?"

"I'm serious," he said with a roll of his eyes, which caused her to giggle again. "Jeez, I'm asking you to marry me and you're laughing."

"I'm not laughing at that, I'm laughing at… the irony of it all."

"Well you're still not answering me," he mumbled. "See? This is why you had to propose the first time."

She chuckled at that, and put a hand on Luke's shoulder gently, giving it a squeeze. "Yes, Luke. Of course I'll marry you." She slid her hand around his neck and pulled him to her for a long kiss. When they broke apart they grinned goofily at each other for a moment before Luke reached into his pocket and pulled out her engagement ring as her eyes widened. "How'd you get that?" she squealed in surprise.

"Well since you kept it--"

She grimaced. "Yeah, I wasn't supposed to do that, was I? I was planning on getting around to returning it one day."

He let her off the hook. "Anyway, your daughter can easily be persuaded to steal from you," he smirked. "Were you really keeping it in the bathroom? Why was it in the bathroom of all places?"

"Why not?" Lorelai asked with a raise of her eyebrows, daring him to question her ideas in engagement ring storage.

Luke sighed. "Sure why not," he repeated her answer with apparent acceptance as she held her left hand out in front of him.

"Well? You asked me to marry you, I said yes."

"I'm serious about this this time, Lorelai," he said seriously, taking her hand and holding it in his own.

"So am I, Luke," she replied in the same serious tone.

"I want to marry you more than anything," he added softly. "I always have."

She nodded, feeling tears pricking at her eyes. "I know that. And the same goes for me."

"I'm not going to be an idiot this time. I'm not going to let this fall apart again. No more postponing, none of that crap. I'm ready. I'm ready to marry you, and we can do it whenever you want. Set a date and it's a deal." She laughed. "And I don't want you to think it has to be soon because everything will fall apart before a date far in the future gets here or anything like that. I'm serious, you set a date, no matter how far in the future, and we will get married on that day. We'll be a normal couple." She laughed again. "So when this goes on your finger," he said with a smile, rubbing her currently bare ring finger gently, "it's not coming off."

She waved her finger at him. "Deal. Bring it on, baby."

He shook his head in amusement and slid the ring onto her finger. She grinned at him and leaned in to kiss him again, moaning softly when she felt his tongue on top of hers. She put her hands onto his face, cupping it gently before they pulled away.

"I get it now," she said gently, sliding closer to him as he slid an arm around her. "It's like the first time you gave me the ring. Out here, on the porch, at night."

"I'm unoriginal, what can I say?"

"I think it's sweet." They fell into silence for a moment before she spoke again. "I really never thought this is where we'd be over a year later."

"Me either," he admitted with a sigh. "But we're moving forward now, this time."

"Good," she said softly. "Forward is good."

"And if you want," he began, "I was thinking about this before… I can get you another ring, a new one to symbolize the new start and everything. One that doesn't remind you of a failed engagement."

"No!" she exclaimed, pulling her hand towards her protectively. "I want this one. It's kind of a symbol of everything we've made it through. And besides, it's pretty."

Luke chuckled and kissed her on the side of the head. "Okay."

"But thank you for the very sweet offer."

"Sure."

"Luke?"

"Hmm?" he asked, rubbing circles on her back absentmindedly.

"I love you, too."

He turned and smiled at her. "I know."

"Come inside?" she asked, smiling happily.

He stood up and extended his hand to her, pulling her up off the stairs. "We can celebrate with real alcohol this time," she added. When they were both standing, she threw her arms around him and gave him another kiss. "I need you to know something," she said softly.

"What?"

"You're the only person I've ever taken a shower with."

The first step to better communication, in true Lorelai form.

tbc…

I think the next part might be the (really long) end in a (very long) epilogue kind of form.


End file.
